Principal Software Engineer, AI Observability & Evals Platform

LangChain / LangSmith
Boston, MA, USA / San Francisco, CA, USA / New York, NY, USA2026-05-13OnSite

About the job

We're looking for a Principal/Lead level Software Engineer to join the LangSmith team and help drive the technical direction of the platform. You'll build across the full stack from backend services and APIs to frontend product surfaces, and you'll play a central role in shaping how we build: setting engineering standards, mentoring engineers across the team, and making architectural decisions that hold up as we scale. If you're energized by both hands-on engineering and the multiplier effect of leveling up those around you, this role is built for that.

Responsibilities

Lead architectural decisions across our Go, Python, and TypeScript stack, ensuring systems are performant, maintainable, and built to scale

Work across the full stack, owning features end-to-end from backend services and APIs through to frontend product experiences

Drive tracing, monitoring, and evaluation workflows at scale, with a focus on reliability and query performance across high-volume data

Help shape the product roadmap by partnering closely with product and design — not just executing on it

Set engineering standards for the team: define patterns, lead code reviews, and establish the foundations others build on

Mentor and grow engineers at all levels through code review, design feedback, pairing, and ongoing technical guidance

Drive projects from ambiguity to delivery while maintaining high engineering standards and aggressive timelines

Troubleshoot and resolve production issues with a root-cause mindset, and implement durable fixes

Ensure system reliability through strong testing, monitoring, and alerting practices

Create and maintain technical documentation, including system design docs and API references

Qualifications

Minimum

10+ years of professional experience in backend or fullstack engineering on highly complex, production systems

Strong programming skills across multiple parts of the stack: backend (Python and/or Go) and frontend (TypeScript, React, or similar)

Demonstrated experience making and owning architectural decisions, including tradeoffs around data systems, APIs, and service reliability

Experience with high-throughput or mission-critical systems, and a proven ability to optimize for performance and reliability

Depth in operationalizing technical work — you've taken systems from prototype to production and kept them running well at scale

Demonstrated track record of mentoring engineers and raising the technical quality of a team, not just the codebase

Strong communication skills and comfort operating cross-functionally with product, design, and engineering leadership

Customer centricity and an ownership mentality — you care how the product lands, not just how the code reads

Preferred

Experience with database systems (Postgres, Redis, ClickHouse) and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure)

Familiarity with observability tooling, evaluation frameworks, or AI/LLM infrastructure