Principal Engineer (Ruby) - REMOTE

Role

StrongMind is hiring a Principal Engineer (Ruby) to own a core product area, lead multi-team technical initiatives, sit on the Architecture Committee, and co-own secure, reliable, and observable systems. This is a hands-on leadership role that blends deep Ruby/Rails expertise with system design, delivery ownership, and cross-functional influence.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the technical direction, quality, and delivery of a key product area.
• Lead multi-team, multi-product projects such as cross-cutting platform changes, shared services, or high-impact features.
• Partner with Product Managers to shape epics into realistic, incremental delivery plans.
• Define and refine service/module boundaries, data contracts, and integration patterns.
• Serve on the Architecture Committee to define and maintain org-wide architectural guidelines and review major proposals.
• Balance short-term delivery with 12–24 month architectural evolution and make pragmatic trade-offs.
• Scope, slice, sequence, and de-risk delivery; set expectations with leadership and stakeholders.
• Stay hands-on in the Ruby/Rails codebase for critical paths, refactors, migrations, integrations, and performance work.
• Model and promote testing, observability, secure coding, and incremental delivery practices.
• Use AI tools to accelerate engineering work while keeping human judgment central.

Requirements

• Expert professional software engineering experience.
• Proven experience building products at scale with Ruby on Rails; mastery-level Ruby/Rails including Rails internals, ActiveRecord, background job patterns, caching, performance tuning, and secure coding.
• Strong full-stack skills: HTML/CSS/JavaScript and experience with at least one modern front-end framework (e.g., React, Vue, Stimulus).
• Solid API and integration experience, including designing and evolving RESTful APIs.
• Strong relational database skills (schema design, indexing, query optimization, migrations at scale), e.g., PostgreSQL or similar.
• Demonstrated experience designing and evolving complex systems (monoliths, modular monoliths, or service-oriented architectures) in production.
• Experience with cloud and DevOps basics: deploying/operating apps on AWS/GCP/Azure, CI/CD pipelines, and containerization (Docker).
• Excellent written communication for remote collaboration and experience mentoring and influencing engineers across teams.

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience with LLM/AI systems, fine-tuning open-source LLMs, RAG flows, or building action-based LLM agents.
• Experience with observability tooling (Datadog, New Relic, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry).
• Experience with Kubernetes, Terraform, or Helm.
• Prior EdTech experience or integrating with LMS/SIS APIs.
• Familiarity with compliance/security-sensitive domains.

What Success Looks Like

• Autonomous evolution of tech stack and architecture while meeting delivery commitments.
• Reliable, predictable shipping and easier extensibility over time.
• Fewer incidents and stronger post-incident learning and hardening.
• Improved testing, observability, and secure development practices felt across teams.
• Leadership trusts the engineer to provide clear options and navigate trade-offs.

Perks & Benefits

• Fully remote role
• Competitive total compensation
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Unlimited PTO
• Fully paid holiday week off at Christmas
• On-site gym and yoga room (where applicable) and flexible work options
• Milestone awards, champion spotlights, community service hours, team events, and quarterly town halls
• Voluntary benefits