The Growth Engineering team is focused on bringing new AI-driven product ideas to life—from early experimentation through to scalable, customer-facing solutions. Engineers on this team work across the full product lifecycle, balancing rapid iteration with thoughtful system design. As a Principal Software Developer, you’ll define architecture, guide technical strategy, and make high-impact contributions to products that are still taking shape.
We’re looking for a Principal Software Developer who can lead across complex technical work, leading the design, development, and scaling of AI-powered applications and agent-driven experiences built on the Workiva platform. This role is ideal for an experienced engineer who thrives at the intersection of hands-on building and technical leadership. Someone who can navigate ambiguity, drive architectural decisions, and influence across teams to deliver meaningful business outcomes.
What You’ll Do
Deliver outcomes
Partner with engineering teams to co-deliver complex work across platform modernization, product evolution, and new product bets.
Adapt your technical approach, planning style, and delivery strategy to match the needs of the work.
Use AI-native development methods to build automation, validation, and engineering harnesses that improve speed, quality, and leverage.
Define and drive technical strategy
Lead technical strategy across large, multi-team initiatives with long-term impact.
Define and evolve system boundaries across complex domains, with a focus on clean interfaces and scalability.
Identify and remove bottlenecks in performance, data flow, reliability, and architecture.
Lead exploration, prototyping, and validation for ambiguous technical problems.
Partner with cross-functional peers on disaster recovery planning, testing, and optimization.
Design AI-driven systems
Design systems that enable autonomous or semi-autonomous engineering workflows.
Build context-aware infrastructure that connects code, documentation, and systems to AI tooling.
Develop guardrails such as validation layers, static analysis, and automation hooks to ensure safe and reliable AI-assisted development.
Improve how AI is used across the organization for both effectiveness and efficiency.
Influence and lead
Raise the technical bar by helping teams think bigger and execute better.
Mentor and challenge Staff+ engineers to expand their scope, judgment, and impact.
Partner with engineering and product leadership to align technical decisions with business outcomes.
Create durable artifacts such as runbooks, decision logs, and tests that can be handed off and evolved by others.
Contribute across product domains, bringing context from one area to solve problems in another.
What You'll Need
Minimum Qualifications
8+ years of experience building and scaling complex software systems.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Security, or a related field; or 6+ years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD with 4+ years of experience; or equivalent practical experience
Demonstrated experience using AI as a primary development collaborator, with a strong quality bar for AI-generated output.
Preferred Qualifications
Proven success leading large, cross-pillar technical initiatives.
Track record of working effectively across platform modernization, iterative product development, and greenfield delivery.
Strong architectural judgment across distributed systems, APIs, and platform design
Ability to operate as a force multiplier for other engineers.
Experience improving engineering testing standards through approaches such as TDD, BDD, load testing, stress testing, chaos testing, invariant testing, or mutation testing.
Experience building infrastructure that improves engineering velocity and quality at scale.
Strong background in distributed systems and platform architecture.
Experience inferring behavioral specifications from existing systems through code, tests, logs, and subject-matter experts.
Ability to deliver production-quality outcomes in a small, time-boxed team setting.
Strong written communication skills and a habit of creating durable, useful artifacts.
A leadership style that empowers others rather than creating dependency.
Travel Requirements & Working Conditions
Up to 15% travel for team jams and internal developer conference
Reliable internet access for any period of time working remotely, not in a Workiva office
Why Join Workiva
Workiva is the platform designed to bring confidence, control, and a competitive edge to the world’s most complex organizations. Our AI-powered platform unifies finance, risk, and sustainability on a single, secure foundation—ensuring data is trusted, traceable, and ready to act on. With an unbroken path from source to output, leaders gain confidence in their numbers, visibility into current and emerging risks, and the ability to move with speed and precision in a constantly changing world.
At Workiva, you’ll bring technology to market that executives, boards, and regulators depend on. The work you do here helps organizations navigate uncertainty, maintain trust, and make decisions that stand up to scrutiny. If you’re energized by meaningful challenges, inspired by collaborative teams, and motivated to help organizations turn uncertainty into advantage, we’d love to meet you.
Workiva is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We believe that great minds think differently. We value diversity of backgrounds, beliefs, and interests, and we recognize diversity as an important source of intellectual thought, varied perspective, and innovation. Employment decisions are made without regard to age, gender identity, race, religion, disability status, sexual orientation, or any other protected characteristic.
Workiva is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities. To request assistance with the application process, please email .
Workiva employees are required to undergo comprehensive security and privacy training tailored to their roles, ensuring adherence to company policies and regulatory standards.
supports employees in working where they work best - either from an office or remotely from any location within their country of employment.
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