Harness is led by technologist and entrepreneur Jyoti Bansal, founder of App Dynamics (acquired by Cisco for $3.7B). The company has raised ~$240M in Series E venture funding, is valued at $5.5B, and backed by top investors including Goldman Sachs, Menlo Ventures, IVP, Google Ventures, J.P. Morgan, Capital One Ventures, Citi Ventures, Service Now, Splunk Ventures and more. Harness is building the industry’s leading AI-powered software delivery platform, enabling teams worldwide to build, test, and deliver software faster, safer, and more reliably. Writing code is only 30–40% of the engineering lifecycle — the rest involves testing, deployments, security, compliance, and optimization. Harness brings AI and automation to this outer loop, turning complex, time-consuming workflows into streamlined processes at massive global scale.
The platform includes industry leading products in CI/CD, Feature Flags, Cloud Cost Management, Service Reliability, Chaos Engineering, Software Engineering Insights, Internal Developer Experience, and API discovery, observability, governance, and runtime protection. Over the past year, Harness powered 128M deployments, 81M builds, 1.2T API calls protected, and $1.9B in cloud spend optimized, helping customers like United Airlines and Choice Hotels accelerate releases by up to 75% and achieve 10x DevOps efficiency. With employees in over 25 countries, Harness is shaping the future of AI-driven software delivery — and we’re looking for exceptional talent to help us move even faster.

Position Summary:

The Harness Engineering team is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead complex cross platform initiatives and lead technical projects across geographies. Principal Engineers are recognized experts in Harness’ technology domain, and represent the senior technical leadership within their organization. Principal Engineers carry the responsibility of steering the course for their organizational segment, partnering with senior leadership, prioritizing initiatives to achieve a range of objectives.

Principal Engineers at Harness:

Poses a careful blend of domain specific engineering expertise and world class technical leadership. There are a number of competencies that a Principal Engineer must display.

Technical Competencies

In depth tactical knowledge of the domain, yet broad experience and skill sets
Domain and product expert when representing harness with customers and internal teams alike.
Seamlessly include, promote and balance cross functional inputs from Product, Design, Enablement
Break down complex technical requirements to motivate and lead cross-functional teams
Consider the execution needed today, into the future, make investments aligned with broader impact

Leadership Competencies

Demonstrable experience in executing on one, or multiple roadmap through working with others, finding the ROI in organized efforts
Subject matter and domain expertise applied to develop others internal and external to Harness
In depth understanding of product features and roadmaps, how customers engage with the product in your space
Clear displays of improving execution via process optimization, or other means
Natural advisor to leadership on resourcing constraints, efficiencies.
Practice and evangelize Harness core values
Participate and contribute to Architecture Committees, Hiring Committees, and others that are formed to solve issues across the org, and company

Key Responsibilities:

Coordinates and proposes collaborative efforts across multiple teams in engineering, guiding team members to make well-informed decisions that align with the strategic plans of the respective sub-department.
Proactively seeks to prevent redundant efforts, taking existing assets and hardening them for broad re-usability
Apply your expertise in a mentorship capacity, to others in the organization. Champion a culture of improvement.
Participate in resource planning, project mapping, and success criteria for large engineering initiatives
Responds swiftly to the needs of today. Plan diligently for the needs of tomorrow
Solve the most difficult technical problems at Harness.
Interfaces with senior engineering leadership on project deliverables and planning. Create visibility and presents to executives when needed
Lead and inspire innovation at the highest order across Harness’ portfolio of products and services
Propose POCs and optimizations regularly
Align the goals of module sub-teams with the overall goals of Harness Engineering
Gather escalations from your project team, remove blockers, enable your project team, broker solutions with cross functional engineering leadership
Represent your project to external customers, partners or other stakeholders.
You are the Harness SME for most, if not all domains in your area of expertise

About You

10+ years of non-internship professional software development experience
Knowledge of object-oriented design, data structures, and algorithms
Deep hands-on technical expertise in at least one major technical area: Modern Software Delivery, building complex distributed systems
Demonstrable experience in advanced Java, Golang, or comparable programing languages.
Depth of experience in distributed systems
Advanced Computer Science degree, or equivalent experience.

Work Location

This position is a hybrid role that will require the person to work from our Bangalore Office 3 days a week.

What You Will Have at Harness:

Experience building a transformative product
End-to-end ownership of your projects
Competitive salary
Comprehensive healthcare benefit
Flexible work schedule
Quarterly Harness TGIF-Off / 4 days

Paid Time Off and Parental Leave:

Monthly, quarterly, and annual social and team building events
Monthly internet reimbursement

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
Harness in the news:

Accelerating Our Mission to Bring AI to Everything After Code
Goldman Sachs leads investment in software delivery startup Harness at $5.5 billion valuation
How Harness runs 16 “startups within a startup” at scale | Jyoti Bansal
Harness Research Shows AI Visibility Crisis Fueling Security Nightmare
Harness has been named to the Inc. Power Partner list for software delivery success

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
Note on Fraudulent Recruiting/Offers
We have become aware that there may be fraudulent recruiting attempts being made by people posing as representatives of Harness. These scams may involve fake job postings, unsolicited emails, or messages claiming to be from our recruiters or hiring managers.
Please note, we do not ask for sensitive or financial information via chat, text, or social media, and any email communications will come from the domain @harness.io. Additionally, Harness will never ask for any payment, fee to be paid, or purchases to be made by a job applicant. All applicants are encouraged to apply directly to our open jobs via our website. Interviews are generally conducted via Zoom video conference unless the candidate requests other accommodations.
If you believe that you have been the target of an interview/offer scam by someone posing as a representative of Harness, please do not provide any personal or financial information and contact us immediately at security@harness.io. You can also find additional information about this type of scam and report any fraudulent employment offers via the Federal Trade Commission’s website (https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/job-scams), or you can contact your local law enforcement agency.