Principal Software Engineer

About Dscout
At Dscout, we're building the most flexible and powerful UX research platform on the market—trusted by the world's top brands in finance (JP Morgan Chase), healthcare (Aya, Headspace), consumer goods (Keen, Verizon), and tech (FAANG, Spotify, AirBnB). Our tools help teams deeply understand the humans behind their products, so they can build better ones.
We're already recognized as a leader in the UX research space. Now, we're going even further. We're transforming our platform and internal development lifecycle to be AI-first—rethinking how we collect, analyze, and act on rich media data (think: video, audio, open text) at scale. Engineers at Dscout aren't just maintaining code—they're building what's next: whole new products and infrastructure designed from the ground up with GenAI at the core.
If you're curious, collaborative, and excited about using AI to solve meaningful, complex problems—we'd love to meet you.
Our Platform
Our frontend is built with React. Our backend uses Elixir and Python. GenAI has significantly impacted our system architecture, requiring us to adapt and evolve. Our department is in the midst of a shift from existing products augmented with AI to AI-first products.
Existing Production Products
Our frontend is in TypeScript & React. And our backend is in Elixir with Phoenix, Ecto, Absinthe, and Oban. The two talk to each other through GraphQL and live in one monorepo. We use Postgres for all of our DB needs and are hosted in AWS. We also have a native iOS and Android app that use Swift and Kotlin. We also make heavy use of WebRTC and WebSockets.
GenAI features are frequent in our existing products, ranging from summarization, categorization, and guardrails against inappropriate data collection. These are built in our new Python stack and accessed via various APIs from Elixir. 
To share a sense of our scale, we have about 11 years of video stored on our platform. All of which we process on our own.
Emerging AI-first Products
Until this moment, the Elixir ecosystem provided us with everything we needed. To meet the speed and demand of GenAI development we have adopted the state-of-the-art tools & frameworks in the Python ecosystem, specifically the Lang family of frameworks. Modular architecture forms the building blocks of our agentic, AI-first applications that will eventually replace our existing products.
You Are…
A polyglot Principal Software Engineer who will help us build and scale our new, AI-first and agentic products. You know several programming languages with expertise in either Elixir or Python, and enthusiasm for both. You'll be responsible for leading the full tech stack and evolving our engineering practices, helping us stand up this exciting new product line. You'll be instrumental in shaping our technology and culture, leading technical initiatives, and mentoring other engineers.
You bring 10+ years of product engineering experience with Principal/Staff-level leadership. You have evolved platforms and stood up new ones across all product and technical dimensions. You have a proven track record of leading technical improvements and mentoring other developers, as collaboration and empathy are cornerstones of our culture. You thrive setting your own direction with minimal input while staying aligned to company goals.
You have experience with AI-driven development and are eager to help evolve our processes in this rapidly evolving space.
Our team is growing, but we're not a big company. We work collaboratively, move fast, and we value technical quality. We'd be looking to you to lead our continued growth and the evolution of our technology. If this sounds exciting, we'd love to hear from you.
The Job
Working hours - Availability 9:30 AM - 5:00 PM CT - Dscout is a US-based company, and while working these core hours is expected in this role, we know that from time-to-time life happens and we can be flexible to meet your needs. What you will do

• Spend about 70% of your time supporting your product team. The other 30% of your time would involve self-directing towards leadership tasks, platform improvements, etc.
• Drive continuous process improvement across the department
• Drive architectural evolution across both our Python and Elixir stack
• Support, participate in and evolve our on-call rotation practice
• Help drive & steer AI-first SDLC evolution
• Work to evolve the Engineering org and mentor other engineers
• Be a polyglot engineer ready and willing to work across the stack
• Lead the long-term evolution for platform scalability, security, and maintainability
• Apply DevOps mindset to improve the Continuous Delivery pipeline and other operational aspects of our SaaS platform
• Be involved in security and compliance efforts for the organization (we are SOC II & HITRUST certified)

What you need to have

• 10+ years experience as a software engineer with some experience in Principal / Staff roles, or equivalent scope engineering role (titles aren't important)
• 3+ years of experience with Elixir or Python
• Strong experience in system architecture (application design, databases, DevOps & infra design), how it all fits together, and design trade-offs
• Desire and a proven track record of leading, mentoring, and growing engineers
• Some experience with AI-driven coding
• Expertise with cloud-based SaaS architectures and evolutionary design
• Ability to work across the full stack with expertise in backend development and a strong working knowledge of the frontend
• At home with agile, DevOps, CI/CD, observability / tracing and data / metrics based decision making
• Experience collaborating with security/compliance teams
• Experience working with US-based companies

Dscout is a team of passionate, empathetic, and curious professionals. As a recognized leader in the Forrester Wave, we're at the cutting edge of experience research technology. The power of research drives us—how in-context insights from real people can build more enjoyable products and services. 
We prioritize learning, sharing, and building. We also deeply value being a diverse and inclusive team and company and look for team members who align with that belief. Join our dynamic team and help shape product roadmaps and business strategies for the world's most loved brands.
Dscout is an equal-opportunity employer that values diversity. We do not discriminate based on identity- race, color, religion, national origin or ancestry, sex, gender identity, and expression, age, physical or mental disability, pregnancy, veteran or military status, unfavorable discharge from military service, genetic information, sexual orientation, marital status, order of protection status, citizenship status, arrest record or expunged or sealed convictions, or any other legally-recognized protected basis under federal, state, or local law.
When you apply at Dscout, we will process your job applicant data, including your employment and education history, transcript, writing samples, and references, as necessary to consider your job application for open positions. For more information about our privacy practices, please visit our Privacy Policy.  We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.

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