Principal Software Engineer- AI
Avalara
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Jul 7, 2026
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Jul 20, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A principal-level architecture role focused on modernizing cloud-native platforms for global tax registration, licensing, and compliance. The work centers on designing rules engines, workflow orchestration, and AI-assisted automation systems, while consolidating shared services and tackling scalability and technical debt across multiple engineering teams. Suited to a seasoned distributed-systems architect with deep experience in compliance-oriented or policy-driven platforms.
Principal level · 15+ years · Remote · Bachelor's required · Full-time
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 4,150 people nationally plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 1,750–6,300
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $138,970 (middle half $107,524–$175,762).
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (7)
The JD hard-requires a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science Engineering with no 'or equivalent experience' escape clause, so the degree requirement is set to Bachelors.
The 15+ years requirement is stated at the role level ('15+ years of software engineering experience'), not tied to any single technology, so it is captured as the overall experience minimum.
Applied AI experience — specifically responsible use of LLMs, agents, and intelligent decisioning — is listed under the required qualifications block and is treated as a hard gate. The 'Avalara is an AI-first Company' section reinforces this but is narrative context.
No compensation figures are disclosed anywhere in the posting.
The role reports to the VP of Engineering and leads architecture across multiple teams, but the JD describes an individual-contributor technical authority role (no direct reports, no hiring/budget ownership mentioned), consistent with Principal engineer rather than a people-management classification.
Ignored 3 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): cloud-native architecture, infrastructure automation, workflow orchestration.
Caller marked this a fully-remote role — scored against the national candidate pool.
Read the full posting
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