Principal Engineer, Engineering Practices
crunchyroll
3 months ago
Full-time
On-site
San Francisco, CA, United States
$260,400 - $325,500 USD yearly
Engineering
Moneyboard classification: Published range reaches threshold
Reported USD annual base: $260,400–$325,500
Original source: Greenhouse
About Crunchyroll
Founded by fans, Crunchyroll delivers the art and culture of anime to a passionate community. We super-serve over 100 million anime and manga fans across 200+ countries and territories, and help them connect with the stories and characters they crave. Whether that experience is online or in-person, streaming video, theatrical, games, merchandise, events and more, it’s powered by the anime content we all love.
Join our team, and help us shape the future of anime!
About the role
The Principal Engineer, Engineering Practices is a senior technical leader responsible for strengthening engineering excellence across Crunchyroll through technical strategy, architectural guidance, engineering best practices, and technical mentorship.
Reporting to the VP, Engineering Operations and Strategy, this role partners closely with Engineering Leadership, and Principal and Staff Engineers across all engineering domains to help shape the company's long-term technical strategy, while enabling engineering teams to make high-quality architectural decisions independently. Rather than acting as a centralized architecture authority, this role succeeds by influencing through technical credibility, developing engineering capability, and fostering a culture of technical ownership.
The Principal Engineer serves as a force multiplier through building frameworks, coaching technical leaders, and creating reusable patterns that allow teams to solve increasingly complex problems themselves. Success is measured not by the number of architectural decisions made personally, but by the growth of engineering capability, technical leadership, and organizational excellence across the Engineering organization.
We are considering applicants for the location of San Francisco, California.
Core Areas of Responsibility
Drive Technical Strategy
Partner with the SVP of Engineering and Engineering Leadership to translate business priorities into a long-term technical strategy
Identify strategic technology investments that improve scalability, reliability, security, and developer productivity
Help align technical initiatives across engineering domains while respecting domain ownership
Evaluate emerging technologies, tools, and engineering practices that improve engineering effectiveness
Influence Architecture Through Guidance
Develop reusable architectural patterns, reference implementations, and engineering guidance that teams can adopt
Help teams evaluate architectural tradeoffs and make informed technical decisions.
Encourage consistency in service architecture through collaboration, education, and proven practices
Facilitate technical design discussions for high-impact initiatives when appropriate
Build Engineering Capability
Coach and mentor Principal, Staff, Senior, and emerging technical leaders across the Engineering organization
Foster architectural thinking and strong technical decision-making within engineering teams
Support career growth for senior technical contributors through mentorship and technical coaching
Lead architecture workshops, technical learning sessions, and engineering forums
Help cultivate the next generation of technical leaders across the organization
Drive Organizational Learning
Capture institutional knowledge and transform it into reusable engineering guidance
Develop technical documentation, architecture patterns, playbooks, and reference materials that reduce dependency on individual experts
Identify recurring engineering challenges and partner with teams create scalable solutions that benefit multiple domains
Improve onboarding and knowledge transfer for engineers through documentation and education
Promote a culture of continuous learning and technical curiosity throughout Engineering
What Success Looks Like
Engineering teams confidently make high-quality architectural decisions with minimal centralized guidance
Technical leadership capability continues to grow throughout the Engineering organization
Engineering best practices are widely adopted through influence, education, and demonstrated value rather than mandate
Architectural knowledge is broadly distributed, reducing reliance on individual subject matter experts
Proven architecture patterns and engineering guidance are consistently reused across teams
Strong collaboration exists across Engineering domains
Operational excellence, including reliability, observability, security, maintainability, and developer experience is embedded within engineering teams
Engineering teams increasingly solve complex technical challenges independently, demonstrating stronger technical ownership and organizational capability
About You
We get excited about candidates, like you, because...
You have 15+ years of experience in Software Engineering
You possess strong Leadership skills. You raise the bar, lead by example, and mentor others
You are highly-collaborative. You influence through credibility over authority, working with all levels across the organization
You have technical expertise across the full stack, and are able to provide insights and guidance to front-end, back-end or infrastructure teams, when needed
You have experience designing, implementing and operating services at large scale
You communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, including senior engineering, product, and business leaders
You are a hands-on engineer that codes, knows how to validate designs, investigate difficult technical problems, and contribute directly to critical initiatives
You are able to distinguish and balance between long-term architectural direction and pragmatic delivery, knowing when to standardize, when to extend existing systems, and when a new approach is needed
You are skilled at defining architecture principles, patterns, and best practices that improve consistency, quality, and engineering velocity across multiple teams
You can translate business strat
Reported USD annual base: $260,400–$325,500
Original source: Greenhouse
About Crunchyroll
Founded by fans, Crunchyroll delivers the art and culture of anime to a passionate community. We super-serve over 100 million anime and manga fans across 200+ countries and territories, and help them connect with the stories and characters they crave. Whether that experience is online or in-person, streaming video, theatrical, games, merchandise, events and more, it’s powered by the anime content we all love.
Join our team, and help us shape the future of anime!
About the role
The Principal Engineer, Engineering Practices is a senior technical leader responsible for strengthening engineering excellence across Crunchyroll through technical strategy, architectural guidance, engineering best practices, and technical mentorship.
Reporting to the VP, Engineering Operations and Strategy, this role partners closely with Engineering Leadership, and Principal and Staff Engineers across all engineering domains to help shape the company's long-term technical strategy, while enabling engineering teams to make high-quality architectural decisions independently. Rather than acting as a centralized architecture authority, this role succeeds by influencing through technical credibility, developing engineering capability, and fostering a culture of technical ownership.
The Principal Engineer serves as a force multiplier through building frameworks, coaching technical leaders, and creating reusable patterns that allow teams to solve increasingly complex problems themselves. Success is measured not by the number of architectural decisions made personally, but by the growth of engineering capability, technical leadership, and organizational excellence across the Engineering organization.
We are considering applicants for the location of San Francisco, California.
Core Areas of Responsibility
Drive Technical Strategy
Partner with the SVP of Engineering and Engineering Leadership to translate business priorities into a long-term technical strategy
Identify strategic technology investments that improve scalability, reliability, security, and developer productivity
Help align technical initiatives across engineering domains while respecting domain ownership
Evaluate emerging technologies, tools, and engineering practices that improve engineering effectiveness
Influence Architecture Through Guidance
Develop reusable architectural patterns, reference implementations, and engineering guidance that teams can adopt
Help teams evaluate architectural tradeoffs and make informed technical decisions.
Encourage consistency in service architecture through collaboration, education, and proven practices
Facilitate technical design discussions for high-impact initiatives when appropriate
Build Engineering Capability
Coach and mentor Principal, Staff, Senior, and emerging technical leaders across the Engineering organization
Foster architectural thinking and strong technical decision-making within engineering teams
Support career growth for senior technical contributors through mentorship and technical coaching
Lead architecture workshops, technical learning sessions, and engineering forums
Help cultivate the next generation of technical leaders across the organization
Drive Organizational Learning
Capture institutional knowledge and transform it into reusable engineering guidance
Develop technical documentation, architecture patterns, playbooks, and reference materials that reduce dependency on individual experts
Identify recurring engineering challenges and partner with teams create scalable solutions that benefit multiple domains
Improve onboarding and knowledge transfer for engineers through documentation and education
Promote a culture of continuous learning and technical curiosity throughout Engineering
What Success Looks Like
Engineering teams confidently make high-quality architectural decisions with minimal centralized guidance
Technical leadership capability continues to grow throughout the Engineering organization
Engineering best practices are widely adopted through influence, education, and demonstrated value rather than mandate
Architectural knowledge is broadly distributed, reducing reliance on individual subject matter experts
Proven architecture patterns and engineering guidance are consistently reused across teams
Strong collaboration exists across Engineering domains
Operational excellence, including reliability, observability, security, maintainability, and developer experience is embedded within engineering teams
Engineering teams increasingly solve complex technical challenges independently, demonstrating stronger technical ownership and organizational capability
About You
We get excited about candidates, like you, because...
You have 15+ years of experience in Software Engineering
You possess strong Leadership skills. You raise the bar, lead by example, and mentor others
You are highly-collaborative. You influence through credibility over authority, working with all levels across the organization
You have technical expertise across the full stack, and are able to provide insights and guidance to front-end, back-end or infrastructure teams, when needed
You have experience designing, implementing and operating services at large scale
You communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, including senior engineering, product, and business leaders
You are a hands-on engineer that codes, knows how to validate designs, investigate difficult technical problems, and contribute directly to critical initiatives
You are able to distinguish and balance between long-term architectural direction and pragmatic delivery, knowing when to standardize, when to extend existing systems, and when a new approach is needed
You are skilled at defining architecture principles, patterns, and best practices that improve consistency, quality, and engineering velocity across multiple teams
You can translate business strat