Principal Software Engineer

About Multitude Insights Multitude Insights builds modern tools for public safety agencies. Our flagship product, BLTN, is a real-time, AI-powered bulletin sharing platform that replaces the legacy email workflows police departments have relied on for decades. By enabling officers and analysts to easily create, search, and link bulletins across agencies, we’re turning static documents into actionable intelligence, faster, safer, and more connected. We’re a venture-backed team of engineers, public safety professionals, and veterans working closely with law enforcement customers across the country. Our mission is to give the people who keep us safe the tools they actually need. The Role We’re looking for a Principal Software Engineer to take technical ownership of our backend systems and help shape engineering culture across the organization. This isn’t just a senior IC role, you’ll be at the heart of a mission-critical SaaS platform used by public safety professionals nationwide, setting the architectural direction, mentoring engineers at every level, and working closely with the VP of Engineering and cross-functional leadership to move fast without breaking things. This is a hands-on role with organizational scope, ideal for someone who wants to build and scale real-world systems while investing in the people around them. Responsibilities • Architect & Build: Take end-to-end ownership of our backend systems, leading the design and development of scalable, production-grade services and APIs. • Set the Standard: Define and enforce engineering best practices, coding standards, and architectural patterns across the organization. • Lead & Mentor: Conduct code reviews, provide technical guidance, and grow a culture of craft and continuous improvement across engineering teams at all levels. • Own the Platform: Drive the evolution of our infrastructure for reliability, performance, and scalability including observability, fault tolerance, and security. • Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Partner closely with product, design, and executive leadership to translate business objectives into concrete technical strategy. • Deploy & Operate (Bonus): Experience with CI/CD pipelines and cloud infrastructure is a plus, but not a core requirement of the role. Qualifications • 10+ years of backend development experience, including significant time in senior, staff, or principal-level roles. • Deep expertise in backend systems design and distributed systems, with a track record of owning complex production infrastructure. • Architect & Build: Lead the development of scalable backend services using Python, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, and OpenSearch. • Proven experience designing and building backend APIs for SaaS products, including multi-tenancy, authentication, versioning, and developer experience. • Strong proficiency in SQL and experience designing for security, fault tolerance, and observability. • Experience setting technical direction at an organizational level, not just within a single team. • Strong communication skills and the ability to make technical trade-offs legible to non-technical stakeholders. • Prior startup or mission-critical environment experience strongly preferred. • Bonus: Hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines and cloud infrastructure (e.g. AWS) at scale. If you’re looking to lead meaningful technical work and help shape a platform used by real-world operators, we’d love to talk.