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- Employment type
- Full-time
- Workplace
- Remote
- Category
- Full-stack
What you'll be doing
Principal Engineers at Fin lead strategic initiatives, contribute to both back-end and front-end systems, mentor engineers, and shape technical architecture. The role blends hands-on development with architectural leadership, collaborating closely with product, design, and engineering teams to deliver impactful SaaS solutions.
- Lead key strategic projects within the R&D organization
- Assess project progress, risks, and challenges for engineering leadership
- Contribute to technical architecture as the company scales
- Participate in all phases of software development
- Mentor and coach other engineers
- Collaborate with designers, product managers, researchers, and data analysts
- Raise technical standards, performance, reliability, and operational excellence
- Play an active role in hiring and career development of engineers
Key requirements
Must-have
- Experience building SaaS products
- Significant demonstrated impact on products or teams
- Deep knowledge of a high-level programming language
- Experience with distributed systems
- 2+ years as primary technical leader for a team
- Experience collaborating with technical leaders, product teams, and designers
Experience: 2+ years as primary technical leader for a team
Role signals
- Technical focus
- full-stack
- Leadership
- Mentoring
- Architecture / system design
- Indicated in the listing
- Hands-on vs management
- Mixed
Similar jobs
Full job description
Fin is the AI Customer Agent company on a mission to help businesses provide perfect customer experiences.
Our AI Agent Fin is the highest-performing AI Customer Agent on the market today, enabling businesses to deliver impeccable, always-on customer support across the customer journey – from service, to sales, to ecommerce. Powered by our own AI models, Fin resolves complex customer issues end-to-end across every channel, with minimal set-up and integration. Fin can also be combined with our natively integrated Intercom help desk for one single system that is designed to meet the needs of modern day support teams.
Founded in 2011, Fin became one of the fastest growing companies and remains one of the largest private software companies in the world with nearly 30,000 global businesses using our products to transform their customer support. Driven by our core values, we push boundaries, build with speed and intensity, and relentlessly deliver incredible value to our customers.
What's the opportunity?
Principal Engineers at Fin have the opportunity to lead the definition and execution of key strategic initiatives.You will work autonomously and be accountable for strategic execution in part of the engineering organization. You will build both back-end and front-end systems, and work closely with designers, product managers, researchers, and data analysts. You will coach and mentor other engineers and partner closely with the Group Engineering Managers on technical strategy and leadership.
Learn more about our engineering culture at intercom.engineering
What will I be doing?
As an experienced engineer you will:
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Have a mastery of domain knowledge and work as a leader within the R&D org to drive key strategic projects.
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Provide assessments of project progress, risks and challenges to engineering leadership to help guide resource allocation and prioritisation.
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Contribute to our technical architecture as we grow. We scale to service requests from all our customers’ customers. We’re growing and so are they.
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Care about agility as much you care for scalability and availability. Continuous deployment keeps us focused on incremental releases. Even our biggest technical achievements roll out piece by piece, feature flagged out of sight.
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Contribute to all phases of software development including ideation, prototyping, design and implementation. This role has a mix of both hands-on development as well as lead/architecture work.
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Build using the best tools in the industry. We invest heavily in AI-powered developer tools that remove friction and help you focus on solving meaningful problems.
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Play an active role in hiring, mentoring and career development of other engineers
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Raise the bar for technical standards, performance, reliability, and operational excellence
What skills do I need?
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Ideally, you’ve built an exciting SaaS product in your previous roles and loved the satisfaction that comes with knowing that people around the world are using something you’ve created
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Significant, demonstrated impact that your work has had on the product and/or the teams
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Deep knowledge of a high-level programming language (for example, Ruby, Python, Perl etc.) but it doesn’t need to be a language that we use here! Great people are effective and learn what we use quickly (or introduce us to better ways of working)
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You will have experience with Distributed systems
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2+ years of experience as the primary technical leader for a team
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Experience collaborating directly with technical leaders, product teams and designers, and a proven track record of delivering value to customers or users. Engineers at Fin are pragmatists who work closely with others on cross-disciplinary teams and have a strong sense of product strategy.
Benefits
We are a well treated bunch, with awesome benefits! If there’s something important to you that’s not on this list, talk to us!
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Competitive salary and equity in a fast-growing start-up
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We serve lunch every weekday, plus a variety of snack foods and a fully stocked kitchen
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Regular compensation reviews - we reward great work!
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Pension scheme & match up to 4%
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Peace of mind with life assurance, as well as comprehensive health and dental insurance for you and your dependents
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Flexible paid time off policy
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Paid maternity leave, as well as 6 weeks paternity leave for fathers, to let you spend valuable time with your loved ones
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If you’re cycling, we’ve got you covered on the Cycle-to-Work Scheme. With secure bike storage too
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MacBooks are our standard, but we’re happy to get you whatever equipment helps you get your job done
**Policies **
Fin has a hybrid working policy. We believe that working in person helps us stay connected, collaborate easier and create a great culture while still providing flexibility to work from home. We expect employees to be in the office at least three days per week.
We have a radically open and accepting culture at Fin. We avoid spending time on divisive subjects to foster a safe and cohesive work environment for everyone. As an organization, our policy is to not advocate on behalf of the company or our employees on any social or political topics out of our internal or external communications. We respect personal opinion and expression on these topics on personal social platforms on personal time, and do not challenge or confront anyone for their views on non-work related topics. Our goal is to focus on doing incredible work to achieve our goals and unite the company through our core values.
Fin values diversity and is committed to a policy of Equal Employment Opportunity. Fin will not discriminate against an applicant or employee on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender, age, physical or mental disability, veteran or military status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, or any other legally recognized protected basis under federal, state, or local law.
Interview prep pack
Grounded in this listing. Use it to prepare examples before you apply.
Your interview focus
You will be assessed on your ability to lead strategic engineering initiatives, drive technical architecture, and deliver impactful SaaS products. Expect focus on distributed systems, hands-on and architectural skills, and mentoring engineers within a cross-functional team.
- Technical leadership·High
- Distributed systems·High
- SaaS product delivery·High
- Architecture & scalability·High
Only have 30 minutes?
Follow a focused preparation plan based on this job.
Start 30-minute prep
Your 30-minute plan
Review Distributed Systems Experience
0–10 minList key projects where you designed or scaled distributed systems, focusing on challenges and solutions.
Summarise Technical Leadership Examples
10–17 minPrepare concise stories about leading teams, mentoring, and influencing architecture or strategy.
Refresh SaaS Product Delivery Knowledge
17–25 minRecall specific SaaS products you helped build, your role, and the impact on users or business.
Research Intercom’s Engineering Culture
25–30 minRead recent posts on intercom.engineering to understand values, practices, and current focus areas.
Talking points
, 6 itemsDistributed Systems Design
You will build and scale systems that serve a large customer base, requiring deep understanding of distributed architectures.
Technical Leadership & Mentoring
The role expects you to lead teams, mentor engineers, and influence technical direction.
SaaS Product Engineering
Experience building impactful SaaS products is highlighted as a key requirement.
Cross-functional Collaboration
You will work closely with product managers, designers, and analysts to deliver value.
Continuous Deployment & Agility
The company values incremental releases and agile delivery, so understanding these practices is important.
Technical Architecture & Scalability
You are expected to contribute to and evolve the technical architecture as the company grows.
What to research
, 3 itemsDistributed Systems Leadership
Expect deep questions on designing, scaling, and operating distributed systems, as this is a core requirement.
Technical Strategy and Architecture
You will likely be assessed on your ability to shape and evolve technical architecture in a growing SaaS environment.
Mentoring and Team Development
Demonstrating experience in coaching engineers and raising technical standards will be a focus.
Questions to ask
, 6 itemsHow does the engineering team define and measure technical excellence?
Why ask this? To understand expectations and standards for your work.
What are the biggest technical challenges facing the team right now?
Why ask this? To gauge the complexity and relevance of your experience.
How do cross-functional teams collaborate on product development?
Why ask this? To learn about day-to-day interactions and decision-making.
What opportunities exist for mentoring and career development within the engineering organisation?
Why ask this? To see how you can grow and support others.
How does the company approach continuous deployment and release management?
Why ask this? To understand the maturity of their delivery processes.
What is the process for contributing to or evolving the technical architecture?
Why ask this? To clarify your influence on architectural decisions.
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