Principal Software Engineer

Job description

We take play seriously. We’re looking for curious adventurers ready to find their party, fueled by imagination and drive to build what’s never been built before. At Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, you’ll collaborate with passionate teams to reimagine our iconic brands and create experiences that spark joy, connection, and community through the magic of play. This is your chance to shape legendary play that lasts a lifetime. **Step Into the Multiverse: Your Next Adventure Starts Here** At **Wizards of the Coast**, we harness the power of imagination and connection to create unforgettable experiences. We create entertainment that inspires creativity, sparks passion, forges friendships, and fosters communities around the globe. In every pursuit our mission is to inspire a lifetime love of games. Whether it's through the strategic depth of *Magic: The Gathering®*, the rich storytelling of *Dungeons & Dragons®*, or our AAA digital game studios, we build worlds that bring people together, spark creativity, and fuel adventure. As we continue to grow and explore new realms, we're seeking passionate, curious, and innovative minds to join the adventure. The Digital Innovations Team (DigIT) is changing how Wizards develops, delivers, and manages the digital systems behind our games — for players, retailers, and the studios that develop our worlds. We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer who can guide product ideas through every stage with agentic AI — from defining the problem with business partners, to developing the system, to deploying it in production, and then improving it based on actual data. This job is not for those who have only observed AI changes from a distance. We need a hands-on creator. Someone who has directly shipped product to production by agentic AI, can provide the code and performance assessments, and can discuss in detail what was successful, what did not succeed, and what they would do differently. If your AI experience is primarily slides and architectural drawings, this is not the right role. **About the Role** You will be responsible for the technical direction of an initiative and the related product surface area, direct tech direction and product direction with/without PM support. You are answerable for what the team delivers, how quickly it adapts, and the business outcomes that result. You will build products using agentic AI as your default development approach, leveraging the harness engineering and guardrails the team has developed. You contribute to evolving these patterns alongside peers, but your primary focus is shipping product. You understand where the technology performs well versus where it only demos effectively. You have informed opinions based on production experience about evaluations, guardrails, cost, latency, determinism, and the engineering methods needed to deliver AI products responsibly at scale. **What You'll Do:** - Guide product concepts through the entire process with agentic AI. Starting from outlining the problem alongside product and business collaborators, moving to prototype development, to a data-informed launch, and then refining based on actual usage data. You are responsible for the full journey, not only a segment of it. - Build, hands-on with agentic AI. Keep close to the code. Deliver production-quality agent systems, analyses, prompts, and supporting services on your own. Define the reference point through achievements, not words. - Direct the build process through data-driven insights. Lead product ideas as testable hypotheses. Initiate tracking early and confirm success criteria with or with not the PM before beginning coding. Base decisions on actual data concerning what to prioritize, change, or remove. Ensure the feedback loop is as short as feasible. - Contribute to the department's agentic AI harness engineering alongside peers. Apply, stress-test, and improve shared patterns — LLMs, agents, Skills, MCP, eval frameworks, guardrails — through real production use. Bring back what works and what doesn't from the field. - Raise the engineering bar on architecture, code review, test strategy, observability, evals, and incident quality. Treat engineering excellence as a baseline expectation, not an optional initiative. - Lead position, influence people and product decisions. Make your EM and PM more effective at their jobs. - Contribute to the hiring bar. Lead technical interviews, calibrate the AI-capability signal in our hiring loop, and mentor the next layer of senior and staff engineers. **What You'll Bring:** - Direct experience creating agentic AI systems. You have developed, deployed, and improved agentic systems in real-world settings, beyond demos or proofs of concept. You can describe the code you authored, the tests you designed, the prompt and tool usage changes you made, the cost and latency considerations you evaluated, the failure types you managed, and the metrics you used to choose the next release. Interviews will involve a hands-on agentic AI task. - Over 10 years of full-stack software engineering experience. At least 3 years in a Tech Lead, Staff, or Principal role responsible for guiding the technical direction of a team or program. - Product-engineer approach. You transform product ideas into operational, monitored, live software. You are comfortable prioritizing alongside PM or direct Product direction on your own, making product tradeoffs on the fly, and relying on metrics to guide iteration. You do not need a fully-detailed ticket to begin. - Deep proficiency across the stack. Modern JavaScript / TypeScript and at least one of Go, Python, or C#. You write production code, not just review it. - Strong systems and infrastructure foundation. AWS at scale, containerization, GitLab/GitHub CI/CD, PostgreSQL and data modeling, REST / gRPC / GraphQL API development, test automation, and a real point of view on observability and reliability. - Architectural judgment. You can defend a build decision, change your mind when the evidence warrants it, and write the build doc that brings the rest of the team along. - Business and product literacy. You can sit with a creative director, a retail partner, or a finance collaborator and have a conversation that is not purely technical. You can articulate business impact and tradeoffs without losing technical rigor. - Outstanding communication and collaboration. You make engineers around you better. You raise standards without becoming a bottleneck. You handle disagreement directly and well. - Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience. Computer Science, Information Technology, or comparable work experience. **Nice to Have:** - Experience leading or contributing to platform / horizontal services (search, notifications, identity, eventing, workflow, data platforms) consumed by multiple product teams. - Experience with Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). - Experience with Kubernetes, Akamai, Terraform, or equivalent infrastructure-as-code tooling. - Experience operating in a tri-lead (TL / EM / PM) or similar matrixed engineering model. - Foundational knowledge of Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, or the tabletop gaming space. *Compensation and benefits may vary based on location and role.* At Wizards, we believe in the magic of diversity—great ideas come from unique perspectives. We are committed to building an inclusive, welcoming workplace where everyone belongs. Wizards is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, marital status, or any other legally protected status. Wizards will provide reasonable accommodation with the application process, upon your request, as required to comply with applicable laws. If you have a disability and require assistance in this application process, please contact your recruiter or coordinator. #Wizards The pay transparency range for this role is listed below. The hiring range will vary based on factors such as experience, skills, location and market conditions. Additionally, employees may be eligible for annual and long-term incentives as part of their overall compensation package. Pay Range $172,600—$259,000 USD Employees may be eligible for annual and long-term incentives as part of their overall compensation package, depending on role, location, and eligibility. Benefits and programs may include: - Health & Wellness - Time Off to Recharge - Financial Well-being - Life & Family Support - Volunteer and Community Initiatives - Learning & Development - Exclusive Perks Please review our [Applicant Privacy Notice](https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.hasbro.com%2Fprivacy%2Fjob-applicant&data=05%7C02%7CMaria.Hughes%40wizards.com%7C73f450b2476e4441be3308dec7006d14%7C701edd3ec7a84789b1ce8a243620d68f%7C0%7C0%7C639167001791388387%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=QzsYnPcynaB0OC2yYMSHab2TyW8jOlZQWyr87FBwDt8%3D&reserved=0) to learn how we collect, use, and protect your personal information in connection with the application process.