This role pays more than
84%
of similar roles. Most pay
$174,600–$231,000
— the shaded band above.
At the midpoint, this role pays about
$248k
versus about
$203k
for comparable roles.
Based on 240 similar postings.
Employer
About Zillow
Zillow Group is a leading real estate and rental marketplace providing consumers with data, tools, and services to find, buy, sell, rent, and finance homes, and connecting buyers with agents and lenders. Industry: Real Estate Technology & Marketplace
Zillow currently has
30 open roles
on FindRole.
Listed pay typically runs
$160,900–$257,100
across 25 roles with salary data.
Principal Software Development Engineer, Backend serves as a technical steward for the Post-Connect domain, supporting five engineering teams and their partners in Product and Data Science. This role involves solving complex technical problems, defining long-term architecture for backend platforms, and ensuring systems are scalable, secure, and cost-efficient within a cloud-native environment. The engineer will build high-throughput APIs, data and event pipelines, and platform capabilities to support multiple brands and machine learning workloads. Working with distributed architectures in AWS across various languages and third-party integrations, the role focuses on the transition from home touring to contract. Key responsibilities include mentoring senior engineers, establishing engineering standards for reliability and performance, and translating business goals into technical roadmaps. The position addresses the challenge of managing appointments against real-world constraints while maintaining rich conversations across disparate channels and apps.
What does a Software Development Engineer earn?
Median $169050 from 191 postings across 17 companies.
Define and drive long-term technical strategy and architecture for scalable, secure, and cost-efficient backend platforms in a cloud-native environment.
Lead the design and implementation of high-throughput APIs, data pipelines, and platform capabilities to support multiple brands and machine learning workloads.
Solve complex technical problems by making high-impact design decisions and de-risking ambiguous initiatives through prototyping and data-driven analysis.
Partner with product, data, and machine learning leaders to translate business goals into actionable technical roadmaps and manage cross-team dependencies.
Mentor and coach senior engineers and tech leads on reliability, performance, testing, incident response, and operational excellence.
Influence platform governance, security, and compliance practices to ensure systems remain resilient and protect customer data at scale.
Drive the adoption of modern backend technologies and workflows to improve developer experience and increase delivery speed.
What we're looking for
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
10+ years of professional software engineering experience designing, building, and operating back-end or distributed systems in production environments.
Experience leading large-scale, highly available, and high-volume services or platforms, ideally in a cloud environment such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.
Experience providing technical leadership across teams or domains, including setting architectural direction and influencing roadmaps.
Ability to drive complex initiatives from concept to production while managing cross-team dependencies.
Expertise in designing high-throughput, low-latency APIs, data/event pipelines, and platform capabilities for machine learning workloads.
Experience mentoring and coaching senior engineers and tech leads on reliability, performance, and operational excellence.
Ability to influence platform governance, security, and compliance practices at scale.
Linux
C
C++
Golang
Python
Docker
Kubernetes
Microservices
Distributed Systems
DOCSIS
CMTS
vCMTS
Broadband Access
Network Infrastructure
Telemetry
Event-driven Architecture