Principal Software Engineer

Join ABBYY and be part of a team that celebrates your unique work style. With flexible work options, a supportive team, and rewards that reflect your value, you can focus on what matters most – driving your growth, while fueling ours.

Our commitment to respect, transparency, and simplicity means you can trust us to always choose to do the right thing.

As a trusted partner for purpose-built AI and intelligent automation, we solve highly complex problems for our enterprise customers and put their information to work to transform the way they do business. Over 10,000 customers trust ABBYY, including many Fortune 500 ones. You will work on further developing a portfolio already containing client names such as DHL, Johnson & Johnson, FDA, DMV, PwC, KeyBank, Spotify, and H&R BLOCK.

We are looking for a skilled and experienced Principal Software Engineer with deep expertise in C++. This is a hands-on technical role focused on owning the design and quality of complex systems across the entire product. The ideal candidate will work across components, guide engineering decisions, and ensure high performance, reliability, and maintainability. This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You will work closely with product and engineering teams to shape and build complex features in a large codebase. The work is primarily C++ but may involve integration with other components and languages.

Responsibilities:

• End-to-End Development: Lead the design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance of key features and systems
• Architecture Ownership: Contribute to architectural decisions and long-term technical direction across products
• Mentorship: Guide and support other engineers through code reviews, technical design discussions, and feedback
• Debugging and Performance: Identify and fix performance issues, memory leaks, and reliability problems
• System Integration: Work on interoperability with other languages and platforms (e.g., C#, Java, Python)
• Technical Communication: Collaborate with other teams and stakeholders to define and implement solutions that meet product goals
• Code Quality: Promote clean, testable, and well-documented code through best practices and peer reviews
• Continuous Improvement: Propose and drive initiatives to modernize the codebase, improve developer productivity, and optimize system performance

Required Qualifications:

• 10+ years of experience with C++ (including modern standards)
• Experience working on complex and large-scale systems
• Strong understanding of COM and system-level programming
• Experience integrating with other languages and platforms (e.g., pybind11, JNI, Interop)
• Strong problem-solving and debugging skills
• Solid background in unit testing, profiling, and code review practices
• Familiarity with Git and CI/CD workflows
• Proven ability to mentor engineers and lead technical initiatives

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience leading cross-team technical efforts and driving architectural decisions
• Strong understanding of design patterns and software architecture in large distributed systems
• Ability to manage technical debt and guide long-term maintainability strategies
• Experience influencing product direction through technical insights and feasibility analysis
• Comfort working with legacy systems while planning for modernization effort

Here are some of our local benefits:

• Work from home, remotely, or hybrid
• Partial compensation for glasses and lenses
• Private health insurance
• Volunteering Time Off (2 days/ year)
• SZÉP Card for recreational activities
• 3 extra days/ month for 'sick leave' without doctors visit
• Flexible working hours

Join ABBYY, and you will:

Love how you work

• We provide remote and hybrid working options to fit all lifestyles.
• We use flexible hours across most of our teams to allow you to find your own definition of balance.
• Encouraging a culture of giving, we provide two paid volunteering days off every year so you can take time to contribute to the causes you care about.
• To ensure your family is cared for, we offer paid parental leave in all our locations.

Love whom you work with

• We are a global team of 600+ colleagues, spread across 15 countries on four continents.
• With colleagues representing 30+ nationalities, ou