Principal Software Development Engineer

At Sonos we want to create the ultimate listening experience for our customers and know that it starts by listening to each other. As part of the Sonos team, you’ll collaborate with people of all styles, skill sets, and backgrounds to realize our vision while fostering a community where everyone feels included and empowered to do the best work of their lives.

As a Principal Embedded Software Engineer on the Player API & Control team, you will lead performance-critical and customer-facing initiatives across the Sonos player stack. You will have a direct impact on the responsiveness, scalability, and reliability of core playback and control experiences. This role sits at the intersection of embedded systems, distributed communication protocols, telemetry, and cross-platform API design.

You will work across teams including App, Cloud, Security, Data, and QA to identify performance bottlenecks, design architectural improvements, and ensure measurable customer impact. If you love solving deep technical challenges, analyzing real-world data, and delivering meaningful improvements to millions of listeners, we want to talk with you.

This is a hybrid position, allowing for a combination of remote work and in-office collaboration. Qualified applicants must live within commuting distance of our Boston or Seattle office locations and should expect to be in office a minimum of 3 days per week.

What You’ll Do

• Lead performance and reliability initiatives across the Sonos APIs.
• This engineer will work on Player Control components and participate in developing software for enabling new products
• Collaborate across teams to mentor local junior peers and facilitate internal development and testing.
• Participate in all aspects of the software development life cycle including planning, requirements, development, and testing.
• Act as a customer advocate by participating in the product definition and planning process.
• Support service initiatives that adhere to best practices for security, scalability, cost, and overall performance.
• Identify and eliminate latency bottlenecks in player-to-app and player-to-cloud communication.
• Design and implement architectural improvements (e.g., async command execution, protocol optimizations, reduced handshake overhead).
• Use telemetry and customer data to correlate code changes to real-world impact.
• Partner cross-functionally with App, UX, PM, and Data teams to improve end-to-end user experience.
• Mentor engineers through design reviews, code reviews, architecture discussions, and root cause investigations.
• Proactively investigate system-level issues before they escalate into customer-impacting problems.
• Present performance findings and architectural proposals to engineering leadership and broader forums.
  
  

What You’ll Need

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years of experience in embedded or systems-level software engineering.
• Strong proficiency in C++.
• Experience working with REST and/or WebSocket-based APIs.
• Experience debugging complex, multi-threaded systems.
• Experience working with telemetry, instrumentation, or performance measurement frameworks.
• Deep understanding of networking fundamentals (TLS/mTLS, WebSocket, HTTP, LAN communication).
• This role requires commuting distance to our main engineering office in Seattle or Boston.
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience optimizing embedded systems for performance and memory constraints.
• Experience with secure communication protocols (TLS, DTLS, authentication flows).
• Experience analyzing large-scale telemetry datasets to drive engineering decisions.
• Familiarity with distributed systems and device-to-device communication.
• Experience with CI/CD systems and modern Git workflows.
• Familiarity with Sonos architecture or similar control-plane systems.
• Experience presenting technical proposals to senior engineering leadership.
  

Impact of This Role

This role will directly influence:

• Playback latency and responsiveness
• Player Control components
• Command execution performance across devices
• Customer-reported reliability metrics
• Cross-team API usability and scalability
• The long-term architecture of the Player API platform
• This is a senior-level IC5 role expected to operate with autonomy, technical depth, and cross-team influence.

Research shows that candidates from underrepresented backgrounds often don’t apply for roles if they don’t meet all the criteria. We encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet every requirement.

Visa Sponsorship: Sonos is unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa for this role at this time. We ask that applicants be authorized to work for any US employer, both now and in the future.

Your profile will be reviewed and you'll hear from us once we have an update. At Sonos we take the time to hire right and appreciate your patience.

The base pay range for this role based off geographic location is:

$190,000 and $237,500

The specific pay offered will depend on the candidate’s geographic location, as well as qualifications and experience. We apply geographic pay differentials based on the cost of labor in the market. Employees in high-cost locations may be compensated at the upper end of the range, while those in medium or low cost markets may be compensated at the lower end of the range. Your recruiter can provide more details about the specific salary range for your location during the hiring process.

Please note that compensation details listed in US job postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include bonus, equity, or benefits.

We also offer a comprehensive benefits program with choice and flexibility in mind to help support the health, wealth, and overall well-being of our employees. Regular full time employees in the US are eligible for benefits on day one, including:

• Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance

• A 401(k) plan with company matching and immediate vesting

• An Open Time Off policy (OTO) so you have maximum opportunity to disconnect and recharge, with no tenure-based vacation accruals required

• 80 hours of sick time upon hire, refreshed annually

• Up to 12 paid holidays per calendar year

• Sonos offers a generous paid leave program for new parents or to care for a family member with a serious health condition, as well as short- and long-term disability for your own medical condition

• Company-paid Disability, Life, and AD&D Insurance

• Voluntary benefits, including Voluntary Life, AD&D, Accident, and Pet Insurance

• Mental health benefits to support your holistic well-being

• A generous employee discount program & Sonos Radio HD - on us!

Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company’s sole discretion, consistent with the law.

Notice to U.S. Job Applicants: Sonos is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, and other legally protected characteristics.

Sonos is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation because of a disability for any part of the employment process, please send an e-mail to [email protected] and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information.