Principal Software Engineer, Dropbox
$221-336.4k
Salary dependent on location. + Stock in the form of Restricted Stock Units & Bonus program
More information about location
Smart workspace company
Be an early applicant
Smart workspace company
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$221-336.4k
Salary dependent on location. + Stock in the form of Restricted Stock Units & Bonus program
More information about location
1001+ employees
Company mission
Dropbox's mission is to design a more enlightened way of working.
Role
Who you are
- 10+ years of full-stack engineering experience, including 3+ years in a technical leadership role
- Proven success operating at both startup and enterprise scale—building early MVPs and scaling to millions of users
- Deep understanding of product architecture evolution and trade-offs between speed and scalability
- Experience with technical diligence and evaluating software systems for integration or acquisition
- Some experience in engineering management preferred
- Strong bias toward experimentation and comfort navigating high-ambiguity problem spaces
Desirable
- Experience leading 0→1 product development or founding early-stage startup teams
- Demonstrated success incubating and scaling new technologies or products within a larger organization
- Strong background in distributed systems design, data-intensive applications, or cloud infrastructure
- Familiarity with modern AI/ML technologies, developer platforms, or productivity tools
What the job involves
- We’re looking for a Principal Software Engineer to shape the future of Dropbox through bold new ideas and technical leadership
- You’ll help define the vision, architecture, and execution for our most forward-looking products — building the foundation for what comes next at Dropbox
- This role sits at the heart of innovation, blending hands-on engineering with strategic thinking
- You’ll explore new product spaces, prototype ideas that don’t yet have a home, and guide how we integrate new technologies — whether we build them or bring them in
- Along the way, you’ll help foster a strong, collaborative engineering culture and partner closely with product, design, and strategy to turn high-potential ideas into real impact
- Build and foster a strong engineering culture focused on excellence, velocity, and innovation
- Define the architecture and integration strategy for new initiatives, including both internally developed and acquired products
- Conduct technical due diligence on potential M&A targets to assess scalability, quality, and strategic fit
- Rapidly prototype new product ideas and validate emerging opportunities that fall outside existing teams
- Partner cross-functionally with product, design, and strategy teams to translate vision into technical execution
- Maintain a high technical bar and guide the team through complex architectural decisions
- Contribute to shaping Dropbox’s long-term innovation roadmap through technical insight and experimentation
Our take
Dropbox started by helping people bring together their files in one central place. The contents of these folders are synchronised to Dropbox's servers along with other computers and devices where the user has installed Dropbox, keeping the same files up-to-date across all devices.
Nowadays, there are lots of competing companies in cloud storage, and some with better distribution (e.g. Google and Apple). This explains why Dropbox is making a big push to reinvent itself after a fairly disappointing run since its IPO in 2018. The new Dropbox turns folders into "Spaces", which are collaboration hubs for teams, complete with comment streams, artificial intelligence tools and integrations into services such as Slack.
The company continues to build out its offerings through acquisitions, such as that of Formswift, bolstering its end-to-end agreement workflow capabilities. Indeed, It's very clear that Dropbox is trying to make a big move from being just a storage company. This seems to be a necessary move given the competitive nature of the industry it is operating within.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
3% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)
Jan 2014
$350m
SERIES C
Oct 2011
$250m
SERIES B
Total funding: $607.4m
Company benefits
- Medical, dental, and vision coverage
- We offer a generous company contribution toward individual medical, dental, and vision insurance coverage, including contributions toward dependent premiums
- Keep sharing and collaborating with friends and family even when you’re not at work with free Dropbox space for your whole crew
- Take the vacation you’ve always dreamed of with up to four consecutive weeks of paid time off
- Celebrate common holidays without your paycheck taking the hit with 11 company paid holidays
- Each Dropboxer has access to 32 hours of paid volunteer time off each year that they can use to support the causes close to their hearts
- We regularly offer panels and seminars featuring the best minds in tech, talent, diversity, and beyond that any Dropboxer can attend from the comfort of their home
- No two Dropboxers are the same, and their benefits shouldn’t be either. Our Perks allowance empowers employees to customize their benefits in line with what really matters to them
- Start building a successful 401K retirement plan with our dollar for dollar contribution match, up to $1,500 per quarter to a maximum of $6,000 per calendar year
Company HQ
Mission Bay, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Arash Ferdowsi
(CTO)Studied Computer Science at MIT before founding Dropbox straight out of university
Drew Houston
(CEO)Studied Computer Science at MIT before founding Dropbox straight out of university
Share this job
View 80 more jobs at Dropbox