Midjourney · Engineering

Principal Software Engineer

Midjourney is hiring for this role, on-site in San Francisco. Posted June 30, 2026. You apply on Midjourney's own site.

Apply on Midjourney's siteAll Midjourney jobs
  • $268K - $279KPay range
  • On-siteWork arrangement
  • Full-timeJob type
  • SeniorLevel (from the title)

How the pay compares

The middle of this posting's range is $274K, 4% below the $286K median for Software Engineer at AI Companies roles across 691 open AI postings that show pay.

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About the job

From Midjourney's job posting. Check the original for the latest details before applying.

What you’ll do

  • Act as the technical lead for large parts of the scanner platform: system architecture, codebase structure, and long-term maintainability.
  • Own core runtime foundations: distributed control, state management, fault handling, and reliability.
  • Drive engineering rigor: testability, code quality, review standards, performance regression prevention, and release processes.
  • Build robust observability: logs, metrics, traces, and replayable diagnostics (with privacy constraints).
  • Collaborate with hardware and recon/ML teams to define interfaces, data contracts, timing/synchronization, and failure modes.
  • Lead complex refactors (e.g., message passing / RPC boundaries, modularization, concurrency model) without halting forward progress.

What we’re looking for

  • Deep software architecture experience for real-world systems: robotics, instrumentation, medical devices, or other complex distributed products.
  • Strong Python and concurrency background (asyncio, multiprocessing, profiling, performance engineering).
  • Track record of shipping systems that are observable, debuggable, and resilient.
  • Strong technical leadership: clarity, pragmatic trade-offs, and mentoring.

Useful experience

  • Building but rock-solid systems: clear interfaces (gRPC/protobuf or equivalent), strong state modeling, and failure handling.
  • High-leverage engineering habits on a lean team: good tests, CI, reproducible dev environments, and fast code review.
  • Practical performance + concurrency work in Python (asyncio, profiling, multiprocessing) and comfort debugging distributed behavior.
  • Security-minded device software: safe defaults, encrypted data paths, and disciplined handling of PII/PHI.
  • Operational thinking: remote updates/management, excellent logging, and diagnostics that make real hardware debuggable.

Apply on Midjourney's site

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