Principal Software Engineer- Backend (Admin Workflows)

Yoodli helps people get measurably better in their careers. We help individuals achieve this by helping them land their job, onboard at their companies, learn new skills, practice a speech, sales pitch or difficult conversation, and then take your Yoodli coach with you from one role to the next. For organizations, this means helping you upskill your entire workforce for the AI Future.
We’ve always believed in the human potential. In 2021, Esha and Varun started Yoodli as an AI communication coach - to help people communicate with confidence. Since then, our users have used Yoodli for so much more: to learn new concepts through AI Roleplays, practice different kinds of conversations (sales pitches, job interviews, manager conversations), and even use Yoodli as their personal coach to help them learn to use Gemini, Claude or other AI Tools. It’s why we expanded our technology to be the AI Platform for Human Skills.
Who We Are
Our team includes former employees from Google, Apple, Microsoft, Tableau, and beyond, united by a passion for empowering people using AI. We're headquartered in the heart of Seattle, and we're having a lot of fun along the way. Our culture is built on failing fast, iterating constantly, and taking bold bets. We value humility, authenticity, and a can-do-attitude.
We’re backed by Madrona, Neotribe the Allen Institute for AI, Cercano, and have raised over $60M to date.
Our customers include Google, RingCentral, Databricks, Snowflake, Sandler Sales, Dale Carnegie, Toastmasters, and users in over 150 countries. We’ve been featured in Forbes, Fortune, WSJ, Geekwire, ZDNet, and several other outlets (www.yoodli.ai/press). You can try the platform for free at www.yoodli.ai and learn more about us in this TED Talk.

As a Principal Backend Engineer on the Admin Workflows team, you'll own the systems that turn an admin's ideas and raw materials into engaging, AI-first training in minutes. Your job is to make that magic more powerful and more reliable at enterprise scale: building the content integrations that ingest source material from the systems customers already use, the agent framework that powers those roleplays, and the content creation workflows at the heart of our admin experience. You’ll also help tell the story of the impact of Yoodli through AI-powered analysis and analytics - feedback and skills intelligence integrated deeply enough that customers can measure real improvement of their learners, not just activity.

Mission alignment: You believe in our vision and care deeply about helping people achieve more by communicating better

Backend expertise: You have deep experience architecting scalable, reliable backend services and setting technical direction that levels up an entire team

Comfort with ambiguity: You thrive on tough, open-ended product problems, unreliable LLMs, and challenging architectures - and you bring order to them

Customer-centric thinking: You architect right-sized solutions - secure, maintainable, and built with the end user in mind

Craft and quality: You hold yourself to a high bar for code quality and system design, and you make the engineers around you better

• 8+ years of professional development experience shipping and operating production systems
• Deep backend expertise -  you've architected and owned services end-to-end, and set technical direction in fast-moving environments
• Track record of designing distributed systems and APIs that scale, and of raising the engineering bar through mentorship and technical leadership
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (GCP, AWS, or Azure) and Infrastructure as Code
• Proficiency in TypeScript or Python, with the ability to debug complex distributed systems
• Clear communicator who who effectively leads collaborations across engineering and product, and who gives and receives feedback well
• You understand how your work connects to business outcomes and user impact
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience
• This role is hybrid with an expectation of 3 days a week in the office - you’ll need to be based in the Greater Seattle Area.

• Experience with LLMs, generative AI, and AI-powered applications
• Speech/audio processing technologies
• NoSQL databases and Kubernetes
• Google Cloud Platform

• Huge impact opportunity: Define technical strategy and build foundational systems at a fast-growing startup
• Competitive compensation: Significant equity opportunities at a venture-backed company
• Base compensation: $180k - $210k 
• Work directly with the founding team and shape the future of the AI platform for human skills
• Join a fun, inclusive and highly motivated team culture (and help define it!)