Principal Software Engineer - AI

Principal Software Engineer – Pulumi AI

Who We Are

Pulumi is realizing the vision of cloud engineering: building tools and services that enable every developer to program the cloud using the tools and practices they already know. We lead with an open source platform that embraces real programming languages, tools, and techniques, and offers an innovative SaaS product that helps teams collaborate. Cloud native leaders like Snowflake and CockroachDB as well as innovators like Mercedes-Benz R&D North America use Pulumi to make cloud infrastructure their competitive advantage. 

Pulumi helps developers and infrastructure engineers tap into the vast world of cloud services–from AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud to Datadog, GitHub, Auth0, Rancher, and more–and create production-grade, repeatable infrastructure. 

Pulumi is headquartered in Seattle, WA. This role can be in Seattle or remote.

About the Role and Team

We’re looking for a Principal Software Engineer who is passionate about developer tools and excited to shape the future of AI-assisted infrastructure as code. You’ll lead engineering efforts for Pulumi Copilot and Pulumi AI, integrating modern generative AI capabilities into the Pulumi Cloud to dramatically improve the developer experience.

This role is hands-on: we’re looking for a strong coder who can dive deep on implementation details, while also driving architectural direction, mentoring engineers, and helping set the AI strategy.

AI is evolving fast—we need someone who can keep pace with new developments and translate them into impactful product capabilities.

What You’ll Do

• Design, code, and lead development of AI-powered features across Pulumi Cloud and CLI.
• Build agentic workflows and intelligent assistants that help users write infrastructure as code, troubleshoot issues, and manage resources more effectively.
• Collaborate across teams to help them surface their features and data to Pulumi AI, and help bring AI into their roadmaps.
• Lead architectural discussions and design/code reviews with actionable feedback.
• Stay up to date on the latest in GenAI and apply it pragmatically to ship real value.

What We’re Looking For

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, ideally in infrastructure, distributed systems, or developer platforms.
• Proficient in one or more imperative languages (e.g., Python, Java, Go, C++, etc.)—you’re comfortable writing and reviewing production-quality code.
• Demonstrated leadership experience—mentoring, guiding architecture, driving initiatives forward.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills.

Bonus if You Have

• 1+ years of experience in GenAI: working with LLMs, chat interfaces, agentic systems, RAG pipelines, or vector databases.
• Experience building developer-focused products or internal developer platforms.
• Contributions to open source projects, or public demos of AI/dev tooling work.
• A passion for shipping iteratively in a fast-paced, evolving space.

Compensation:

• Base Salary Hiring Range:  $180,500 - $227,850
• All full-time employee offers at Pulumi include base salary, bonus or variable, equity and benefits (details below).

Benefits & Perks at Pulumi:

Health & Wellness:
We offer comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and supplemental insurance at no cost to U.S. employees. Internationally, we comply with local healthcare requirements and provide regionally appropriate coverage.

Time Off:
Our unlimited PTO policy encourages balance and rest — and we require employees to take at least three weeks off annually, plus 13 U.S. holidays.

401(k):
U.S. employees are eligible for a 401(k) plan with an employer match to support long-term financial wellness.

Parental Leave:
We provide 20 weeks of paid leave for birthing parents or primary caregivers, and 16 weeks for non-birthing parents or secondary caregivers.

Remote-First Culture:
Pulumi has been fully remote since 2020, with teammates across 20+ U.S. states and 12+ countries. We support flexible work with asynchronous collaboration and an annual “work from anywhere” stipend.

Professional Development:
Every employee receives an annual learning and development budget to support growth, learning, and career goals.

Equity Ownership