Principal Software Engineer- Backend (Admin Workflows)

Each of us at Yoodli has faced our own communication challenges — overcoming a lisp, freezing during a job interview, feeling anxious about speaking up. That shared empathy shapes a culture that's uplifting, inclusive, and deeply authentic. We value humility, a bias for action, and the belief that we win together.

Our team includes former employees from Google, Apple, Microsoft, Tableau, and beyond, united by a problem we've personally lived. 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've raised $60M — including a $40M Series B led by WestBridge Capital — backed by Madrona, Neotribe, Cercano, and incubated at the Allen Institute for AI. We're valued at $300M and grew revenue 900% year-over-year.

Our customers include Google Cloud, Snowflake, Databricks, RingCentral, SAP, FranklinCovey, KornFerry, Sandler Training, Toastmasters, and many more — with learners in over 150 countries. Results speak for themselves: Google Cloud certified 15,000+ reps without scaling headcount. Snowflake recovered 1,200+ manager hours per quarter. Harness cut training review time by 75%.

We've been featured in TechCrunch, Axios, The Information, Forbes, Fast Company, and more. 

Try the platform free at yoodli.ai.

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 AI-powered communication coaching
• Join a fun, inclusive and highly motivated team culture (and help define it!)