Principal Support Engineer

Principal Support Engineer

Sonar helps prevent code quality and code security issues from reaching production, amplifies developers' productivity in concert with AI assistants, and improves the developer experience with streamlined workflows. Sonar analyzes all code, regardless of who writes it — your internal team, genAI, or third parties — resulting in more secure, reliable, and maintainable applications. Rooted in the open source community, Sonar's solutions support over 30 programming languages, frameworks, and infrastructure technologies. Today, Sonar is used by +7M developers and 400K organizations worldwide, including the DoD, Microsoft, NASA, MasterCard, Siemens, and T-Mobile. We believe in developing great products that are supported by great internal teams and a strong culture. We are highly committed and obsessed with the company, users, each other, and our open source community. We have high standards and hold each other accountable for acting with positivity, dedication, thoughtfulness, empathy, and passion daily. We are deliberate with our decisions with high clarity of intention. At the same time, we feel extreme urgency and move forward quickly. And lastly, we are highly effective and operationally efficient. We operate collectively as One Team to accomplish our goals. At Sonar, CODE is more than just an acronym – it's a mindset that defines daily operations.

At Sonar, we're a group of brilliant, motivated, and driven professionals working hard to help supercharge developers to build better, faster. Sonar helps to continuously improve code quality and code security while reducing developer toil. This means that developers can focus on doing more of what they love and less of what they don't. Our solutions don't just solve symptoms of problems – we help fix issues at the source – for all code, whether it's developer-written, AI-generated, or from third parties. We have a dynamic culture with employees worldwide and hub offices in the USA, Switzerland, the UK, Singapore, and Germany. Team members should be able to come to work every day, work on a product they are proud of, love what they do, and feel energized by their peers. With our roots deep in the open source community, we're all about the mission: supercharge developers to build better, faster.

As a Principal Support Engineer, you are a master of your craft. You have a deep understanding of the entire IT landscape, not just individual devices. You act as a critical player in maintaining the company's IT infrastructure and security. You are not just fixing a single user's issue; you are diagnosing complex system-wide problems and architecting solutions that prevent future issues. A principal support engineer mentors junior team members, develops best practices for the department, and serves as a key contributor to the overall IT strategy. You are a proactive force for security and stability, anticipating potential threats and fortifying the company's systems before a breach can even occur.

What You Will Do Daily:

You will manage the full lifecycle of employee IT support, from onboarding to offboarding, for a global company. This includes handling IT equipment logistics, user access management, and ensuring data integrity.

You'll serve as a senior point of contact for daily IT incidents and service requests, resolving issues, and identifying long-term solutions. Your role involves providing on-site and remote support, including potential travel to different office locations to assist with expansions or cover absences.

A key part of your work will be creating and maintaining comprehensive documentation to empower users and streamline internal processes. You'll also manage relationships with IT vendors and drive continuous improvement by analyzing support data to enhance tooling and policies. Finally, you'll oversee physical security systems, such as access control and security cameras.

The Experience You Will Need:

10+ years of progressively responsible experience in a technical support or engineering role. This is a senior position influencing global strategy; it requires a deep, proven track record in global, fast-moving organizations.

Proven ability to handle complex, high-profile, and critical customer issues. This includes managing and driving a resolution for technical problems that have been escalated through multiple tiers of support.

Demonstrated experience in a leadership or mentorship capacity. This is crucial. The Principal Engineer isn't just an individual contributor; they are a "knowledge multiplier" who trains and elevates the skills of others on the team.

Experience in a "problem prevention" and "root cause analysis" role. A Principal Engineer doesn't just fix problems; they identify and address the underlying issues to prevent them from recurring. This includes analyzing trends, identifying system bottlenecks, and proposing long-term solutions.

Experience in creating and implementing support processes and best practices. This includes developing internal documentation, standard operating procedures, and knowledge base articles that improve team efficiency and customer outcomes.

Demonstrated success in leading and driving continuous improvement efforts. This could be a project to automate a repetitive task, improve incident response time, or streamline a troubleshooting process.

The Technical Expertise You Will Need:

Deep Subject Matter Expertise (SME): Possesses an expert-level understanding of end-user infrastructure and corporate domain architecture.

Advanced Troubleshooting and Debugging: Ability to navigate complex systems, analyze logs and traces, develop ad hoc reporting.

System-Level Thinking: deep architectural views of how different systems and components interact with each other to provide a service to our internal customers. This is about seeing the "big picture" of the IT infrastructure, not just a single endpoint.

Automation and Scripting: familiar with at least one scripting language (e.g., Python, PowerShell) to automate tasks, create diagnostic tools, and improve operational efficiency.

Cloud and Infrastructure Knowledge: A strong understanding of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), virtualization, networking, and security concepts.

Familiarity with evaluation and support of AI tools for Helpdesk and Customer workflows.

Data Analysis: passion for analyzing available data and system metrics (e.g., using tools like Datadog, Splunk) to identify trends, pain points, and areas for improvement.

The Leadership Experience You Will Need:

Mentorship and Coaching: Track record of success teaching, guiding, and developing the skills of junior and senior support engineers.

Strategic Communication: Excellent written and verbal English communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences, including senior leadership and customers.

Proactive and Self-Driven: A self-starter who takes ownership of issues and actively seeks out opportunities to improve processes and prevent future problems.

Consensus Building: The ability to lead and influence diverse technical solution teams, building consensus across multiple viewpoints and priorities.

Why You Will Love It Here:

Our culture and mission set us apart. We have a dynamic work culture that values respect and kindness and embraces the right to fail (and get right back up again!).

Great people make a great company. We value people skills as much as technical skills and strive to keep things friendly while still being passionate leaders in our domains.

We have a flexible work policy that includes 3 days in-office and 2 days work-from-home each week for those located near our office locations; some locations such as Dubai, India, Japan, and Australia operate fully remotely.

We have a growth mindset. We love learning and believe continuous education is critical to our success. In an ever-changing industry, new skills are necessary, and we're happy to help our team acquire them.

As the leader in our field, our products and services are as strong as our internal team members.

We embrace transparency with regular meetings, cascading messages, and updates on the growth and success of our organization.

Benefits of Working with Sonar:

Flexible comprehensive employee benefit package.

We encourage usage of our robust time-off allocations. You will receive 23 days of PTO per calendar year (on a pro-rated basis depending on your employment start date), with additional time provided for sickness, life events, and holidays.

We offer an exciting 401(k) plan that has a 4% match, fully vested on day one of participation.

Generous discretionary Company Growth Bonus, paid annually.

Fully paid parking in the heart of downtown Austin, Texas.

Global workforce with employees in 20+ countries representing 35+ unique nationalities.

We have an annual kick-off somewhere in the world where we meet to build relationships and goals for the company.

Monthly catered events, and team events.

We Value Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: At Sonar, we believe that our diversity is our strength. We are a global company that values and respects different backgrounds, perspectives, and cultures. We are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment where everyone feels valued and empowered to contribute their best. We