Principal Backend Development Engineer

About Highspot

Highspot is pioneering the category that is fundamentally changing the way companies increase sales productivity. On a mission to transform the way millions of people work with sales enablement, Highspot is committed to building breakthrough software with a spark of magic. We believe a great place to work is about more than the work – it’s about what the company stands for, and how it authentically represents its values in the real world. To this end, we have put intentional focus on creating equitable workspaces for each of our employees. Our goal is to create a culture where everyone feels a deep sense of belonging and is empowered to be an agent of change, with the ability to transform themselves, their workplace, and their world.

About the Role

We’re looking for a Principal Engineer to lead Highspot’s Analytics Platform capability within our Data & Analytics Pillar. This role is responsible for our in-app analytics experience, empowering customers with real-time insights into their go-to-market performance. As a key technical leader, you will shape the architecture, scalability, and long-term vision of our custom-built data visualization & reporting framework. You will drive frontend and backend innovations, evolving our Typescript/React-based framework to provide robust, composable analytics components, while also ensuring query performance in our In-Memory OLAP database and scalability of our backend API and transpiler. Partnering across teams, you will enhance system reliability, drive best practices, and mentor engineers in building high-performance, interactive analytics experiences that enable our customers to make data-driven decisions with confidence.

• Architect and Scale the Analytics Platform – Design and evolve the key parts of our system including database/query optimizations, backend scalability, and frontend framework improvements to support self-serve analytics and real-time insights.
• Lead Frontend and Backend Analytics Excellence – Ensure the Analytics Platform provides a scalable, efficient, and well-governed foundation for serving analytical queries and reports while advancing the frontend component architecture to support interactive analytics experiences.
• Own End-to-End Analytics Flow – Guide the transformation, querying, and visualization of analytics data, optimizing for performance, usability, and seamless integration across backend and frontend systems.
• Evolve Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for Data Governance – Enhance our RBAC framework to ensure the right people have access to the data they need while maintaining security, compliance, and performance across the Analytics Platform.
• Enable Advanced Visualization & Reporting – Partner with Product and Engineering teams to evolve and optimize our ad-hoc data visualization and reporting framework, ensuring robust composable components with efficient state management and interaction logic.
• Drive Best Practices and Technical Standards – Establish and evangelize patterns for query optimization, schema evolution, frontend component reusability, and analytics-driven UI design.
• Lead and Mentor – Act as a technical leader and mentor for engineers across the team, providing deep technical guidance on analytics, query performance, frontend development, and reporting challenges.
• Cross-Team Collaboration – Partner with engineering teams across product, backend, frontend, Data-Platform and AI/ML to ensure a seamless, high-performing analytics experience.
• Operational Excellence – Define and drive SLA, availability, and performance objectives, ensuring the Analytics Platform meets the needs of our Analytics and Insights vision.

• Proven Experience – 10+ years in software engineering with deep experience in analytics platforms, query engines, OLAP databases, and frontend analytics frameworks.
• Expertise in Analytics & Query Processing – Strong hands-on knowledge of OLAP databases, query transpilation, analytics frameworks, and frontend-driven analytics experiences.
• Expertise in Frontend Analytics & Component Architecture – Experience designing and developing reusable, performant, and scalable frontend components for interactive analytics experiences. Deep understanding of modern frontend frameworks, component-based architecture, and state management patterns to enable dynamic, data-rich visualizations.
• Architectural Leadership – Experience designing and implementing scalable analytics-serving platforms and interactive query experiences with frontend and backend considerations.
• Strong Programming and Data Skills – Proficiency in SQL, TypeScript, React, and modern transpilation techniques, with a solid understanding of query optimization, frontend component reusability, and performance tuning.
• Cloud-Native & Infrastructure Knowledge – Familiarity with AWS, Kubernetes, and Terraform/Pulumi, with a focus on analytics services and frontend scalability.
• Technical Leadership – Proven ability to drive cross-functional technical initiatives and influence platform decisions across both backend and frontend architectures.
• Analytical Mindset – Passion for solving complex problems in interactive analytics, frontend visualization, query processing, and composable reporting frameworks.
• High Standards for Reliability and Performance – Commitment to ensuring high query performance, frontend responsiveness, availability, and data accuracy.

• Make an Impact – Own and drive the Analytics Platform powering insights for thousands of customers.
• Innovate at Scale – Work on cutting-edge analytics-serving technologies, frontend frameworks, and interactive query experiences.
• Collaborate with the Best – Be part of a world-class engineering culture that values craftsmanship, ownership, and innovation.
• Grow with Us – Access strong mentorship, leadership opportunities, and career growth in an environment that invests in your development.

Base salary range: $180,870 - $272,174. Employees may also be eligible for bonuses, stock options, and other forms of compensation.

The above represents total expected compensation for this role. Actual compensation will depend on various job-related factors, including, but not limited to, location, experience, and job qualifications.

Highspot also offers the following employee benefits for this position:

-Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, disability, and life benefits

-Health Savings Account (HSA) with employer contribution

-401(k) Matching with immediate vesting on employer match

-Flexible PTO

-8 paid holidays and 5 paid days for Annual Holiday Week

-Quarterly Recharge Fridays (paid days off for mental health recharge)

-18 weeks paid parental leave

-Access to Coaches and Therapists through Modern Health

-2 volunteer days per year

-Commuting benefits

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Equal Opportunity Statement

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of age, ancestry, citizenship, color, ethnicity, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or invisible disability status, political affiliation, veteran status, race, religion, or sexual orientation.

Did you read the requirements as a checklist and not tick every box? Don't rule yourself out! If this role resonates with you, hit the ‘apply’ button.