Principal Staff Software Engineer, Service Infrastructure

Overview

LinkedIn is the worlds largest professional network, built to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Our products help people make powerful connections, discover exciting opportunities, build necessary skills, and gain valuable insights every day. Were also committed to providing transformational opportunities for our own employees by investing in their growth. We aspire to create a culture thats built on trust, care, inclusion, and fun where everyone can succeed. Join us to transform the way the world works.

Role Location and Work Model

This role will be based in Sunnyvale or San Francisco. The work location for this role is hybrid, meaning it will be performed both from home and from a LinkedIn office on select days, as determined by the business needs of the team.

Team Description

At LinkedIn, the Service Infrastructure (SI) organization provides the foundation for all online services to run reliably, efficiently, and at scale. We power core technologies that enable every product team at LinkedIn to build, deploy, and operate their services seamlessly. gRPC is at the heart of LinkedIns inter-service communication, connecting thousands of services across multiple programming languages. Our mission is to define and drive the future of gRPC at LinkedIn, evolving the infrastructure to improve reliability, performance, developer experience, and scalability while reducing complexity and operational cost.

Role Summary

As a Principal Staff Engineer in Service Infrastructure, you will be the primary domain expert for gRPC and play a critical role in shaping the long-term direction of inter-service communication at LinkedIn. You will lead foundational projects, set technical strategy, and provide thought leadership that impacts every service and developer at LinkedIn.

Responsibilities

• Define the long-term technical direction for gRPC at LinkedIn, balancing scalability, reliability, developer experience, and efficiency.
• Lead large-scale gRPC infrastructure initiatives, including evolution from bridged to native gRPC, support for multiple programming languages, and alignment with LinkedIns platform vision.
• Provide architectural leadership across the engineering organization, setting the bar for performance, resiliency, and security in LinkedIns RPC stack.
• Partner with other senior engineers and managers to drive cross-functional alignment on gRPC strategy and execution.
• Influence how gRPC integrates with the broader service platform, including dependency management, observability, configuration, and deployment.
• Act as a mentor and technical leader, raising the bar for craftsmanship and guiding engineers across multiple teams.
• Represent LinkedIn externally as an industry thought leader, sharing best practices and innovations in large-scale RPC systems.
• Establish a culture of innovation, quality, and operational excellence, ensuring that design and architectural choices optimize for developer productivity and business impact.
• Anticipate future needs in scale and efficiency, and proactively identify infrastructure gaps and solutions.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications

Preferred Qualifications

Skills

Additional Information

You will benefit from our culture. We strongly believe in the well-being of our employees and their families. That is why we offer generous health and wellness programs and time away for employees of all levels. LinkedIn is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. The pay range for this role is $218,000 to $357,000. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, depth of experience, certifications, and specific work location. This may be different in other locations due to differences in the cost of labor. The total compensation package for this position may also include annual performance bonus, stock, benefits and / or other applicable incentive compensation plans. For more information, visit .

Equal Opportunity and Accommodation

We seek candidates with a wide range of perspectives and backgrounds and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. LinkedIn considers qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other legally protected class. LinkedIn is committed to offering an inclusive and accessible experience for all job seekers, including individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation, contact accommodations@ with the specific accommodation requested. Examples include documents in alternate formats, interviews in accessible locations, and sign language interpretation. A response will be provided within three business days.

LinkedIn will not discriminate against employees or applicants for discussing pay. Pay transparency and related rights are described at the Pay Transparency Policy, San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, and applicable data privacy notices linked in this description.

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