Requirements: English
Company: Worklife
Region: Paris , le-de-France
About the Company
Worklife is scaling rapidly and aiming to enhance its technical excellence and maturity. Were seeking an accomplished Principal Back End Engineer to drive backend architecture, scalability, and performance while mentoring engineers and leading high-impact initiatives. As Principal Engineer, you will be directly attached to the CTO, shaping the evolution of our distributed backend. This role combines hands-on execution with strategic leadership. Following our acquisition by Crdit Agricole, we maintain our scale-up agility while benefiting from financial stability.
About the Role
As a Principal Engineer, you will play a pivotal role in shaping our technology landscape. You will collaborate with:
- 1 CTO
- 1 Principal Engineer (you!)
- 1 Staff Engineer
- 3 Engineering Managers
- 4 Backend Engineers
- 3 Frontend Engineers
- 3 DevOps Engineers
- 1 SecDevOps Engineer
- 2 QA Engineers
- 2 Mobile Engineers (1 Android, 1 iOS)
Our Stack
- Backend: Microservices in Python (FastAPI), DDD-inspired architecture
- Frontend: Nuxt 3 (Vue.js) & React
- API Gateway: GraphQL (Apollo)
- DevOps & CI/CD: GitLab, Docker, Kubernetes (Helm)
- Infrastructure: AWS (Terraform)
- Observability: Datadog, Sentry, Pganalyzer
- Project Management & Design: Linear, Figma, Notion
- Data Stack: Segment, Airflow, Airbyte, DBT, PostgreSQL Data Warehouse
Missions
- Define & execute backend architecture strategy scale distributed systems, optimize middleware, and evolve the architecture.
- Spearhead large-scale initiatives like caching strategies, event-driven processing, and API optimizations.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with the BE team, aligning backend strategy with product, platform, security, and business goals.
- Promote and implement software craftsmanship best practices, fostering continuous improvement.
- Act as a technical mentor and force multiplier, supporting and upskilling engineers through coaching, technical reviews, and knowledge-sharing across the team.
- Anticipate technical challenges and identify high-leverage investment opportunities, ensuring long-term technical health.
- Streamline incident response & reliability strategies drive monitoring, alerting, and failure recovery improvements.
- Push automation & efficiency refine CI/CD, testing strategy, and developer workflows for velocity and resilience.
- Ensure clean, scalable, and maintainable code while delivering high-impact solutions.
Expected Results During Onboarding
30 Days:
- Gain deep familiarity with our codebase, architecture, and technical stack.
- Participate in shadowing & tech support rotations, gaining firsthand experience of real-world system behavior.
- Deep dive into the roadmap, processes, and engineering workflows.
- Understand business goals, priorities, and how engineering contributes to success.
- Establish relationships with engineering, product, and leadership teams.
- Provide a structured report on first observations, identifying strengths, improvement areas, and unexpected challenges.
60 Days:
- Lead technical discussions and provide insights on system improvements.
- Take ownership of key technical projects and drive impactful contributions.
- Gain direct experience on live production issues, improving reliability and response processes.
- Propose and implement process optimizations to enhance development efficiency.
- Provide technical mentorship to engineers, fostering skill development.
- Engage with stakeholders, ensuring alignment on priorities and expectations.
- Identify inefficiencies in CI/CD, monitoring, and developer workflows, proposing practical solutions.
- Present a technical roadmap aligned with business challenges, identifying risks, tech debt, and high-leverage improvements.
90 Days:
- Architect and lead high-level initiatives, ensuring scalable and maintainable solutions.
- Establish regular knowledge-sharing sessions (Tech Talks, RFC reviews, architecture roundtables) to foster a culture of technical excellence and cross-team collaboration.
- Play a key role in strategic decision-making, aligning technology with business objectives.
- Drive best practices, mentorship, and engineering craftsmanship to raise technical standards across the team.
- Execute the roadmap and ensure its continuous progress, keeping it aligned with strategic objectives and delivering key initiatives.
Profile Sought
At Worklife, we embrace diversity and prioritize inclusion, equity, and acce