Principal Engineer, Engineering Practices

About Crunchyroll Founded by fans, Crunchyroll delivers the art and culture of anime to a passionate community. We super-serve over 100 million anime and manga fans across 200+ countries and territories, and help them connect with the stories and characters they crave. Whether that experience is online or in-person, streaming video, theatrical, games, merchandise, events and more, it’s powered by the anime content we all love. Join our team, and help us shape the future of anime! About the role The Principal Engineer, Engineering Practices is a senior technical leader responsible for strengthening engineering excellence across Crunchyroll through technical strategy, architectural guidance, engineering best practices, and technical mentorship. Reporting to the VP, Engineering Operations and Strategy, this role partners closely with Engineering Leadership, and Principal and Staff Engineers across all engineering domains to help shape the company's long-term technical strategy, while enabling engineering teams to make high-quality architectural decisions independently. Rather than acting as a centralized architecture authority, this role succeeds by influencing through technical credibility, developing engineering capability, and fostering a culture of technical ownership. The Principal Engineer serves as a force multiplier through building frameworks, coaching technical leaders, and creating reusable patterns that allow teams to solve increasingly complex problems themselves. Success is measured not by the number of architectural decisions made personally, but by the growth of engineering capability, technical leadership, and organizational excellence across the Engineering organization. We are considering applicants for the location of San Francisco, California. Core Areas of Responsibility Drive Technical Strategy Partner with the SVP of Engineering and Engineering Leadership to translate business priorities into a long-term technical strategy Identify strategic technology investments that improve scalability, reliability, security, and developer productivity Help align technical initiatives across engineering domains while respecting domain ownership Evaluate emerging technologies, tools, and engineering practices that improve engineering effectiveness Influence Architecture Through Guidance Develop reusable architectural patterns, reference implementations, and engineering guidance that teams can adopt Help teams evaluate architectural tradeoffs and make informed technical decisions. Encourage consistency in service architecture through collaboration, education, and proven practices Facilitate technical design discussions for high-impact initiatives when appropriate Build Engineering Capability Coach and mentor Principal, Staff, Senior, and emerging technical leaders across the Engineering organization Foster architectural thinking and strong technical decision-making within engineering teams Support career growth for senior technical contributors through mentorship and technical coaching Lead architecture workshops, technical learning sessions, and engineering forums Help cultivate the next generation of technical leaders across the organization Drive Organizational Learning Capture institutional knowledge and transform it into reusable engineering guidance Develop technical documentation, architecture patterns, playbooks, and reference materials that reduce dependency on individual experts Identify recurring engineering challenges and partner with teams create scalable solutions that benefit multiple domains Improve onboarding and knowledge transfer for engineers through documentation and education Promote a culture of continuous learning and technical curiosity throughout Engineering What Success Looks Like Engineering teams confidently make high-quality architectural decisions with minimal centralized guidance Technical leadership capability continues to grow throughout the Engineering organization Engineering best prac…