Top Remote Principal Engineer Jobs in Chicago, IL

Lead development of a massively distributed edge compute platform. Design fault-tolerant systems, external APIs, high-throughput traffic routing, and Kubernetes-based resource management. Establish architecture standards, reliability metrics, security practices, and technical governance. Collaborate with AI/ML, hardware, networking, and security teams; communicate risks to executives; manage customer requirements; review code; and mentor engineers on distributed systems best practices.

Architects and leads enterprise data engineering platforms, including scalable ETL/ELT pipelines, streaming frameworks, cloud infrastructure, data warehouses, and AI/ML data systems. Establishes engineering standards, governance, monitoring, data quality, security, and schema management practices. Designs AI agents using LLMs, partners across business and infrastructure teams, and makes high-impact architectural decisions for reliable, secure, multi-region data environments.

Lead design, development, and operation of highly available AKS Resource Provider and control-plane services. Drive cluster lifecycle, upgrades, networking, security, scalability, observability, resiliency, and incident prevention for large-scale distributed cloud systems. Collaborate across Azure engineering teams, lead architectural decisions, improve tooling and automation, troubleshoot production issues, and mentor engineers while supporting reliable Kubernetes workloads across cloud and edge environments.

Lead the architecture, development, testing, and deployment of hyperscale distributed storage systems optimized for AI and machine learning workloads. Drive innovations in scalability, performance, security, durability, and efficiency while collaborating with AI researchers and cloud infrastructure teams. Mentor engineers, guide technical strategy, and help shape Azure Blob Storage into an AI-native platform supporting zettabyte-scale storage.

Principal Software Engineer responsible for operating and improving business-critical data pipelines and infrastructure. Duties include developing monitoring, alerting, logging, CI/CD workflows, scalable data integrations, automated testing, deployment automation, and production support. The role troubleshoots workflow failures, data-quality issues, performance bottlenecks, and infrastructure incidents while collaborating with data engineers, platform engineers, and architects. Preferred experience includes Databricks, Spark, AWS, Terraform, Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, observability, identity management, and enterprise data platform governance.

Lead enterprise AI architecture, strategy, and technical vision across products and business segments. Design and deploy scalable GenAI applications using LLMs, agent workflows, RAG, vector databases, NLP, and computer vision. Establish standards for AI security, monitoring, cost management, responsible AI, and documentation. Partner with product, data science, engineering, executives, customers, and vendors while mentoring teams and driving reusable AI platforms and services.

Design, develop, and operate highly scalable and resilient Azure VM Scale Set cloud services. Own features from architecture through deployment and operations, solve distributed-systems challenges at hyperscale, and drive reliability, security, performance, disaster recovery, testing, monitoring, automation, and engineering best practices. Collaborate across teams to deliver platform capabilities and customer outcomes.

Design, build, test, deploy, and operate scalable, secure Azure networking software and automation tools. Act as DRI, monitor production, troubleshoot incidents, run root-cause analysis, and drive reliability, performance, and cost improvements. Collaborate with PMs and architects, participate in design/code reviews, mentor engineers, and champion security, privacy, and compliance.

Lead as a customer‑embedded principal engineer to design, build, and ship production-grade solutions. Translate business needs into technical approaches, influence senior stakeholders, accelerate delivery in ambiguous environments, and transition work to FDE crews while driving long-term account impact.

Lead hardware strategy, performance architecture, and benchmarking for large-scale Microsoft 365 and AI workloads. Investigate performance, scalability, and efficiency across compute, GPU, memory, storage, networking, and accelerators. Partner with Azure and platform teams, build AI-assisted performance engineering tools, and influence cross-organizational architecture and infrastructure decisions.

Provides technical leadership for Azure SQL databases supporting a highly available Azure service. Responsibilities include database performance tuning, reliability and capacity planning, schema changes, data migrations, observability, incident response, root cause analysis, operational automation, and technical strategy. The role partners with software engineers, SREs, and architects to improve scalability, durability, cost efficiency, and long-term service reliability across teams.

Design, build, and operate AI-powered automation, CI/CD systems, distributed services, developer tooling, and code-intelligence platforms. Own significant capabilities from architecture through production, improve engineering workflows using measurable evaluations, scale reliable automation and delivery systems, and operate secure multitenant services. Lead technical reviews, define reliability practices, integrate platforms through APIs and MCP, mentor engineers, and drive ambiguous technical problems to dependable production outcomes.

Leads technical pre-sales activities for healthcare data and technology solutions. Develops technical proposals, presentations, demonstrations, RFI/RFP responses, and customized solution designs. Partners with sales and business solutions teams to support revenue growth, retention, and quotas. Advises clients on product functionality, integration, usage, and strategic fit while building executive relationships. Serves as a regional technical resource, mentor, and escalation point, occasionally supporting post-sales needs.

Originate and build expressive interactive graphics and motion experiences for Copilot using code, shaders, and real-time browser rendering. Develop production-ready components, optimize CPU/GPU performance, ensure accessibility and reduced-motion support, and collaborate with product engineering on integration and maintenance. Create reusable graphics systems and tools, document technical and artistic decisions, mentor teammates, and guide ambiguous projects from creative concept through delivery.

Supports enterprise platforms and applications by administering secure systems, monitoring and maintaining Tier-2/Tier-3 environments, analyzing data, performing network upgrades, and documenting system architectures. Designs, deploys, and maintains AWS and hybrid-cloud systems while administering Linux and Windows environments in large enterprises. Collaborates with engineers, developers, and testers to meet program needs and maintain security standards.

Build product features and improve technology platforms supporting claims processing and payment. Collaborate with subject matter experts, operations, and technology teams to design solutions that improve member experiences, operational efficiency, and provider relationships. The role requires individual technical contribution, ownership, comfort with ambiguity, and the ability to work across a broad technology stack in a fast-paced startup environment.

Design and operate large-scale, AI-native cloud infrastructure (especially Kubernetes/AKS). Improve service quality, automate incident prevention/remediation, accelerate engineering productivity, and integrate AI tools into development workflows.

Design and build Seeq’s internal platform, including infrastructure, services, multi-tenant Kubernetes clusters, system interfaces, and secure deployment capabilities. Improve scalability, reliability, software delivery, and infrastructure cost and performance. Lead migrations, integrate security practices, architect distributed systems, collaborate cross-functionally, and mentor engineers while remaining hands-on at Staff or Principal scope.

Leads and contributes hands-on to development of an AI engineering platform for semiconductor testing. Designs agent tooling, RAG systems, cloud and air-gapped inference infrastructure, Kubernetes platforms, reusable AI patterns, and agent-facing UIs. Sets technical direction, selects hardware and inference stacks, manages production systems, resolves cross-team architecture decisions, and guides a small engineering team. Requires strong distributed systems, software development, leadership, communication, and LLM/agent tooling expertise.

Own the networking architecture and roadmap for AKS Flex and Unbounded, enabling secure, reliable, high-performance Kubernetes connectivity across sites, clouds, edge environments, and on-premises infrastructure. Design overlay and underlay networks, routing, encrypted tunnels, eBPF dataplanes, and distributed systems for high-latency and partitioned environments. Integrate InfiniBand and RDMA for AI workloads, lead cross-team architecture efforts, improve global fleet performance and reliability, and participate in production operations and on-call rotations.

Lead architecture and hands-on development of Azure Kubernetes Service capabilities for AI workloads. Design secure, reliable, scalable distributed systems; coordinate engineering teams; define testing and deployment strategies; improve observability and operational readiness; investigate production issues; and mentor engineers while advancing engineering practices.

Lead architecture and development for AKS Flex, scaling etcd and Kubernetes control planes for distributed node fleets. Design remote-node provisioning, lifecycle automation, Kubernetes-native APIs, secure bootstrap, upgrades, and reliability systems across Azure, on-premises, edge, and other clouds. Drive performance testing, production operations, open-source collaboration, technical strategy, cross-team alignment, and mentorship while solving distributed-systems, storage, security, and scalability challenges.

Customer-embedded principal data scientist who leads technical delivery for strategic accounts, builds production-grade solutions, translates business needs into technical approaches, influences senior stakeholders, and transitions work to FDE teams while operating in ambiguous, fast-paced environments.

Lead calibration architecture, optical integration, sustaining, troubleshooting, and manufacturing enablement for high-speed coherent optical linecards. Analyze calibration and test data, resolve production and field issues, develop lab-to-factory bring-up workflows, and collaborate with DSP, hardware, firmware, test, and manufacturing teams. Mentor optical engineers, communicate technical risks and trade-offs, and apply coherent optics expertise to current and next-generation platforms.

Serve as a customer-embedded technical leader aligned to a strategic account, driving business outcomes by building and shipping production-grade solutions, translating business needs into technical approaches, influencing senior stakeholders, preparing transitions to FDE crews, and operating with speed and entrepreneurial ownership in ambiguous, customer-facing environments.