Principal Software Engineer - Backend, AI (all genders)

We are looking for a Principal Fullstack Engineer to join the Learner Experience Cluster at Babbel and help shape the technology behind impactful, customer-facing learning experiences used by millions of learners worldwide.

As a Principal Software Engineer, you operate at the intersection of deep technical judgment, product thinking, and organizational impact. You care deeply about how technology enables learning outcomes and learner experience, and you are motivated by building systems that are not only scalable and reliable, but also meaningfully improve how people learn. You shape technical direction across a cluster of teams, solve high-leverage system-level problems, and scale the effectiveness of others through influence, planning, and strong role modeling.

This role is well suited for product-oriented engineers who enjoy working close to customer value, partnering with product and design teams, and connecting technical decisions to measurable impact on learners. Your impact is durable, visible across teams, and focused on improving outcomes such as delivery speed, reliability, developer productivity, and learner experience.

You will:

• Drive technical direction and architectural coherence across multiple customer-facing systems and teams.
• Establish, evolve, and scale shared patterns, standards, and platforms that reduce fragmentation and improve consistency across learning experiences.
• Own and improve high-leverage interfaces, APIs, and data models that power learner journeys, personalization, and experimentation.
• Multiply impact through abstractions, platforms, and shared solutions that improve both engineering productivity and learner outcomes.
• Improve delivery performance across the cluster, enabling teams to ship improvements faster, safer, and more predictably.
• Advocate for modern engineering practices such as continuous delivery, observability, and SRE, with a strong focus on production quality and customer impact.
• Anticipate cross-team risks and dependencies early and proactively de-risk them to protect learner experience and delivery commitments.
• Lead and accelerate mission-critical initiatives that span teams, quarters, and systems, from discovery through production.
• Partner closely with product and engineering leadership to translate learning strategy and business goals into executable technical and organizational plans.
• Empower senior engineers through mentoring, coaching, and providing constructive feedback to help them grow into higher-impact roles.
• Step in as an implementer when needed to set standards, unblock critical paths, or resolve complex technical deadlocks.

You have:

• Extensive experience designing, building, and operating customer-facing distributed systems using TypeScript, Golang, and AWS.
• Strong architectural judgment, with the ability to make and clearly communicate trade-offs in service of product and learner outcomes.
• Deep experience with backend and fullstack systems, including APIs, data models, asynchronous systems, and service-to-service communication.
• A strong product mindset, with a demonstrated ability to connect technical decisions to customer value, experimentation, and measurable impact.
• Proven ability to improve system-level outcomes such as reliability, scalability, delivery speed, and operational excellence in production environments.
• Hands-on experience with modern CI/CD, infrastructure as code, observability, and running systems that directly impact end users.
• A track record of influencing technical direction across multiple teams without relying on formal authority.
• Experience establishing and scaling shared platforms, libraries, or engineering standards with real adoption.
• Strong written and spoken English, with the ability to explain complex technical topics to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor and coach senior engineers and help others grow into higher-impact roles.
• Experience using data, instrumentation, experimentation, and feedback loops to guide product and technical decisions.
• Practical experience with AI-assisted development tools and sound judgment in applying them to improve engineering effectiveness.

Nice to have:

• Experience building or scaling learning platforms, personalization systems, or experimentation frameworks.
• Exposure to domain-driven design, event-driven architectures, or platform engineering in product-led organizations.
• Experience shaping team boundaries, ownership models, or operating models alongside evolving product architecture.
• A strong interest in improving how technology, product, and learning science come together to create meaningful learner experiences.

Please note that our company’s operating language is English, so you will need to be able to work in English.

Some perks of becoming a Babbelonian:

• Enjoy 30 vacation days and the chance to take a 3-month Sabbatical. Plus family and life situation counseling.
• Decide how, when and from where you want to work with our flexible working hours and remote-friendly options as Jobbatical (up to 3 months inside the EU and UK) or work from our fully equipped office with nap, faith and family rooms.
• Learn and grow with the internal learning opportunities, and use a yearly learning & development budget for external training. Learn languages with Babbel for free with your full access to Babbel & Babbel Live classes.
• Take advantage of your mobility benefits options and a discounted Urban Sports Club membership.
• Be part of our employee communities (such as FLINTA, DE&I Ambassadors and LGBTQIA groups), attend cultural and regular social events.

Diversity at Babbel

As part of our ongoing journey towards building a diverse, equitable and inclusive company, we welcome everyone to apply, especially those individuals who are underrepresented in tech. We are a learning company, inside and out, and we encourage you to apply even if you do not fit all the technical requirements - all candidates are assessed based on skills, qualifications and on our business needs. Please state your pronouns in your application, and let us know if you’d like to be addressed by a name other than the one appearing on your official documents. If you have a disability or special need, feel welcome to inform us, so that we can provide you with the proper assistance in the application process.