Principal Performance Engineer

Are you a systems thinker who loves uncovering performance bottlenecks across complex distributed systems? Do you thrive on solving the hardest scalability problems in production, at the intersection of networking, concurrency, and cloud architecture? Are you eager to define the performance engineering vision at a fast-growing fintech startup that's reimagining an industry? If so, we invite you to be a part of our innovative team.

As a Principal Performance Engineer at Ridgeline, you will serve as the technical anchor for performance engineering across the organization. You’ll lead deep investigations into system behavior, champion performance-focused design, and shape standards that impact the company’s platform at scale. This highly visible role requires working across engineering teams, influencing architecture decisions, and mentoring developers in best practices for building resilient, high-performance software. You'll help design scalable, cost-effective testing and validation systems, leveraging cutting-edge technologies—including AI tools like GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT—to accelerate insights and maximize efficiency.

At Ridgeline, how we work matters as much as what we build. Ridgeliners act like owners, choose growth over comfort, and communicate with transparency. We assume positive intent, bias toward action, and bring solutions—not just problems. We celebrate wins, learn from setbacks, and thrive in a resilient, collaborative, high-performing culture. If the Ridgeline Way excites you, we’d love to meet you.

The impact you will have:

• Lead deep performance investigations across distributed services and multi-region systems
• Analyze latency, throughput, saturation, and failure modes across data and control planes
• Partner with platform teams on runtime, networking, and container performance
• Define performance standards, benchmarks, and system-level expectations
• Mentor engineers and influence technical decisions across multiple teams
• Design and influence standardized, AI-assisted performance workflows that scale across teams and systems, including agent-driven validation of performance and reliability over time.
• Lead the development of scalable, cost-efficient performance testing systems that accurately represent diverse customer workloads and real-world usage patterns.

What we look for:

• 12+ years of engineering experience with deep expertise in distributed systems
• Strong understanding of networking, concurrency, caching, replication, data structures, and scaling patterns
• Proven track record of improving performance in large-scale production environments
• Comfort influencing without authority and setting technical direction

About Ridgeline

Ridgeline is the first front-to-back system of record for investment managers. Founded by visionary entrepreneur Dave Duffield (co-founder of both PeopleSoft and Workday), the company was created to modernize an industry held back by outdated, disconnected technology. Powered by a single, real-time data set and embedded AI, Ridgeline helps firms automate complexity, accelerate collaboration, and deliver tailored client experiences at scale, without added headcount or risk. Ridgeline is headquartered in Lake Tahoe, with offices in New York, Reno, and the Bay Area, and is recognized by Fast Company as a “Best Workplace for Innovators,” by Frost & Sullivan as a “Technology Innovation Leader,” and by The Software Report as a “Top 100 Software Company.”

Ridgeline is proud to be a community-minded, discrimination-free equal opportunity workplace.

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