Principal Software Engineer, Tooling (Product)
Gemini is hiring a Principal Software Engineer, Tooling (Product) in New York, United States. It pays $193k-$275k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Gemini.
Level's read on this job
- On Level's scale, this software engineer role is Uses AI ●●○○: an ordinary role that requires AI tools.
- The listed pay starts 15% above the typical software engineer posting on Level.
- Tools and skills the posting cites include Python, React and TypeScript.
- Level classifies it as a lead role.
- Level lists 29 other open roles at Gemini.
AI in this role
Set technical vision and architecture for customer platforms while shaping and advancing the organization's agentic SDLC practices.
About the Company
Gemini is a global crypto and Web3 platform founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss in 2014, offering a wide range of simple, reliable, and secure crypto products and services to individuals and institutions in over 70 countries. Our mission is to unlock the next era of financial, creative, and personal freedom by providing trusted access to the decentralized future. We envision a world where crypto reshapes the global financial system, internet, and money to create greater choice, independence, and opportunity for all — bridging traditional finance with the emerging cryptoeconomy in a way that is more open, fair, and secure. As a publicly traded company, Gemini is poised to accelerate this vision with greater scale, reach, and impact.
The Department: Tooling
The Role: Principal Software Engineer (Product)
As a Principal Product Engineer, you'll set technical direction for the customer-facing platform that defines how millions of users experience Gemini — onboarding, compliance, customer support, and the systems that hold the customer journey together. This is a role for an engineer who operates at the level of the technology itself: someone accountable for company-level initiatives, who drives the hardest technical challenges across organizational boundaries, and who creates the architectural vision that other teams build against.
You'll work across backend, web, and mobile, but your leverage comes less from what you build directly than from the direction you set, the leaders you grow, and the frontier you push. We treat AI-assisted development and automation as first-class — an agentic SDLC pipeline where agents plan, implement, and review work through our harness under human gates. As a Principal, you're expected to shape where that frontier goes, define the patterns and operational guidelines other engineers adopt, and advance how the whole organization builds. If you're energized by owning ambiguous, company-critical technical bets and multiplying the engineers around you, we'd love to talk.
This role is required to be in person twice a week at our New York City, NY office.
Responsibilities:
- Own the technical vision and architecture for the customer-facing platform, designing for scale and reliability with a multi-year horizon and anticipating needs before they arrive.
- Review critical designs across organizations and drive the designs for projects involving the hardest technical challenges at the company; act as a key driver of demos and technical direction beyond your own team.
- Be accountable for one or more core company initiatives spanning onboarding, compliance (KYC/identity), and customer support — carrying them from ambiguity through production and long-term operation.
- Identify strategic direction in technology and product, proposing and adopting architecture and platform approaches that advance it; tie technical bets clearly to company objectives.
- Plan and deliver large, complex, cross-org programs with interdependencies across teams and systems, spanning months to years; identify the problems worth solving and advocate for their prioritization.
- Define patterns, operational guidelines, and engineering practices for your vertical(s), and extend process improvements across teams and command pilot units.
- Provide critical technical guidance proactively — raising the security, reliability, and quality bar across the organization, and debugging or contributing to the most complex parts of a system when needed.
- Act as a technical multiplier: mentor and develop engineers and future leaders, share knowledge, delegate to grow others, and lead initiatives across domains, including outside your core area of expertise.
- Drive the organization toward a strategic vision for strong systems, sustainable practice, and healthy engineering culture; play a critical role in recruiting and bar-raising.
Minimum Qualifications:
- 12+ years of software engineering experience building and operating complex production systems at scale.
- Recognized expertise in one or two core technical domains, with a track record of being accountable for company-level systems or initiatives end to end.
- A history of driving architecture and design for the hardest technical challenges across multiple teams or organizations.
- Demonstrated ability to set technical vision with company-level impact and to bring an increasingly strategic mindset to engineering decisions.
- Fluency across multiple layers of the stack (backend services plus web and/or mobile) and willingness to go deep wherever a problem requires.
- Proficiency in a typed language (e.g., TypeScript, Scala, Java, Go) and comfort with JavaScript/TypeScript on web and mobile surfaces.
- Experience building consumer-facing applications with strong product and UX sensibility.
- Fluency in using AI coding tools and automation, and a point of view on how to advance an agentic development practice.
- A record of acting as a technical multiplier — developing engineers and leaders, influencing prioritization across teams, and leading cross-domain initiatives.
- Excellent communication skills, including the ability to communicate complex technical issues to diverse audiences and build alignment across organizations.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience in the crypto or fintech industry, or as a user of crypto products.
- Deep experience with onboarding, identity/KYC, compliance, or customer support tooling.
- Experience architecting and operating AI agents or agentic workflows in production at scale.
- Familiarity with React/React Native and cloud/microservices architecture.
- A record of driving product and technical strategy with data and experimentation.
- Experience representing engineering externally (talks, writing) or in cross-company technical collaboration.
- Competitive starting pay
- A discretionary annual bonus
- Long-term incentive in the form of a new hire equity grant
- Comprehensive health plans
- 401K with company matching
- Paid Parental Leave
- Flexible time off
Salary Range: The base salary range for this role is between $192,500 - $275,000 in the State of New York. This range is not inclusive of our discretionary bonus or equity package. When determining a candidate’s compensation, we consider a number of factors including skillset, experience, job scope, and current market data.
In the United States, we offer a hybrid work approach at our hub offices, balancing the benefits of in-person collaboration with the flexibility of remote work. Expectations may vary by location and role, so candidates are encouraged to connect with their recruiter to learn more about the specific policy for the role. Employees who do not live near one of our hubs are part of our remote workforce. All employees, however, are required to onboard in-person at one of our office locations.
At Gemini, we strive to build diverse teams that reflect the people we want to empower through our products, and we are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, or Veteran status. Equal Opportunity is the Law, and Gemini is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. If you have a specific need that requires accommodation, please let a member of the People Team know.
#LI-AA1
How we rate this
Principal Software Engineer, Tooling (Product) at Gemini rates 45 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Uses AI (AI Level 2 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Uses AI. An ordinary role that requires AI tools.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Pay
- This job starts at
- $193k
- Typical software engineer job
- $168k
This posting starts 15% above the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
- Tell me about a project where system architecture was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where technical leadership was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where agentic sdlc was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where fullstack engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents, System Architecture, Technical Leadership, Agentic Sdlc, and Fullstack Engineering. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Put the AI tool in a bullet point about what you did, not just in a skills list. This role treats it as a required part of the job.
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