Job Description

About the Role:

We are looking for a Principal Engineer to shape the architecture of ThoughtSpot’s cloud-native, distributed platform and scale it to support our ambitious product vision. You will bring deep systems thinking, architectural expertise, and pragmatic problem-solving to help evolve our platform across reliability, scalability, developer productivity, and security.

This is a strategic, high-impact engineering role where you will:

• Partner with engineering, product, and business leaders to align architecture with long-term goals.

• Mentor and guide teams on best practices and drive org-wide architectural initiatives.

• Lead efforts to simplify systems, scale core platform services, and enhance reliability.

What you'll do:

• Define and drive platform and product architecture aligned to our business and product vision.

• Lead org-wide engineering initiatives focused on velocity, reliability, observability, and simplification.

• Architect for scale, optimise for high availability, cost efficiency, and platform resilience.

• Drive platform capabilities that accelerate product teams: authN/authZ, config frameworks, data privacy, multi-tenancy, CI/CD improvements.

• Champion best practices such as architectural reviews, chaos engineering, canary deployments.

• Deep dive into complex cross-team challenges and guide technical execution.

• Mentor engineers, identify architectural debt, and promote structured decision-making frameworks.

• Actively collaborate with leadership on technical strategy, product roadmaps, and platform direction.

• Foster a culture of operational excellence through automation, observability, and continuous improvement.

What you bring:

• 15–20 years of experience building scalable, distributed systems in high-growth product environments.

• Proven architectural leadership in SaaS platforms, cloud-native stacks, large-scale microservices.

• Demonstrated experience driving engineering initiatives: reliability, uptime, security, simplification.

• Expertise in platform engineering patterns: chaos engineering, canary rollouts, internal developer platforms.

• Strong system & API design, platform reliability, security & privacy principles.

• Hands-on mindset with ability to operate at both strategic and tactical levels.

• Excellent communication & stakeholder influence across product & engineering orgs.

Mandatory and Required Skills for All ThoughtSpot Roles

Spotters are expected to demonstrate AI literacy and workflow integration to include to ability to:

• Comfortably and confidently integrate artificial intelligence into their daily workflow to increase productivity and quality.

• Hands-on experience to leverage AI tools (industry-leading LLMs) to increase productivity, automate routine tasks, and improve work quality.

• Speak to the experience of using AI for research, content creation, and document summarization while maintaining ownership of judgment and final decisions.

• Write effective prompts to get the most accurate and creative results from AI tools.

Spotters are expected to exemplify these key traits and AI Mindset:

• Curiosity in exploring new AI tools

• Adaptability to quickly learn and implement new, emerging AI technologies

• Critical thinking to know when to identify when AI should be used versus when human judgement is necessary

This combination of curiosity, adaptability, and discernment defines the AI mindset, and it’s required for every role at ThoughtSpot.

AI Mindset for All Spotters

At ThoughtSpot, we believe AI is a necessary and essential part of how we work. Every role, across every team, is expected to be fluent and comfortable with using AI to do their best work.

All Spotters are expected to experiment with ThoughtSpot’s AI tools (like Spotter and SpotterViz) and leading industry LLMs to streamline workflows, enhance output, and uncover new insights. Whether drafting content, analyzing data, or summarizing documents, AI is a daily partner. We value curiosity, openness to learning, and thoughtful application of AI to create real value. Training and resources are provided so every Spotter can confidently create with AI.

Hybrid Work at ThoughtSpot

Spotters are expected in-office 3 days per week to experience the energy of their local office. This approach balances the benefits of in-person collaboration and peer learning with the flexibility needed by individuals and teams.

ThoughtSpot for All

At ThoughtSpot, diverse teams build better products. Complex data problems need many perspectives, not just one. We welcome different backgrounds, identities, and experiences, and we work to create a place where everyone can be themselves and do their best work. If this role excites you and you believe you’re a strong match, we encourage you to apply.

What Makes ThoughtSpot a Great Place to Work?

ThoughtSpot is the Agentic Analytics Platform that empowers every enterprise to transform insights into action, on a mission to make the world more fact driven. We hire people with unique identities, backgrounds, and perspectives - this balance-for-the-better philosophy is key to our success. When paired with our culture of Trust, Customer Obsession, Innovation and Intensity, ThoughtSpot cultivates a respectful culture that pushes norms to create world-class products. If you’re excited by the opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds in the business and make your mark on a truly innovative company, we invite you to read more about our mission, and apply to the role that’s right for you.

About ThoughtSpot

The world’s most innovative companies turn to ThoughtSpot’s AI-Powered Analytics to put data in the hands of everyone, from the C-suite to the frontline. With simple, natural language search and AI, anyone can ask questions, discover insights, and act with confidence. Unlike legacy tools that sacrifice performance for complexity, ThoughtSpot is intuitively designed for every business user while being built to handle the most complex, large-scale data, wherever it resides. This unique combination of speed and simplicity is why enterprise leaders trust ThoughtSpot to transform decision-making into a truly data-driven culture.

At ThoughtSpot, we’re a curious, data-driven bunch. We believe the world works better when everyone has access to facts. That’s why we build products that make asking and answering data questions as natural as having a conversation.