Staff/Principal Software Engineer
Quick facts
- Pay
- $217,000 - $410,000 per year
- Type
- Full-time
- Location
- San Francisco, California
- Skills
- Python, Ruby
- Industry
- Information Technology — 671 open jobs
- Visa in listing
- H-1B, OPT
- Apply
- Free to apply — never pay anyone for a job offer or visa sponsorship
Job description
About the company
Our client is a profitable, fast-growing go-to-market software company backed by more than $250M in funding. Its platform pairs one of the largest B2B contact databases in the industry, over 210 million contacts and 35 million companies, with an AI-native engine that helps sales, marketing, and revenue teams find prospects, engage customers, and close deals.
More than 500,000 companies and millions of users run on it today. The team is now rebuilding the entire product around AI and agents, with real scale and real revenue already underneath them. Engineers treat AI-assisted development as core to the craft, using agents to move faster on design, investigation, and implementation.
About the role
This is a senior individual contributor seat with unusual reach. You will own technical direction for a significant area of the platform, either large-scale distributed systems or agent-centric AI products, and work hand-in-hand with VPs and C-suite engineering leaders on the highest-priority problems in the company.
What you will do
- Own the architecture and technical direction for a significant area of the platform, either large-scale distributed systems or agent-centric AI products
- Lead the hardest technical problems, making the build, buy, and cost tradeoffs that shape the entire engineering organization
- Set standards and patterns that raise the bar across multiple teams and multiply the output of the engineers around you
- Partner with engineering and product leadership to keep technical direction tied to business outcomes
- Use AI-assisted development as a first-class part of how you work, leaning on agents for design, investigation, and implementation
- Float across the highest-priority projects as the go-to individual contributor in the room
Requirements
What we are looking for
- 8 to 15 years in backend or full-stack engineering, building large-scale distributed systems
- A track record of owning and operating systems in production at serious scale, serving 100,000+ users
- Clear upward trajectory in scope rather than a plateau at senior level
- Strong system design instincts for large-scale data and distributed systems
- Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development tools such as Copilot or Cursor
Nice to have
- Experience building LLM-based or agent-centric products
- Familiarity with Ruby on Rails, Python, MongoDB, or Elasticsearch
- Infrastructure-as-code experience with Terraform
- A strong database or data engineering background that has broadened into distributed systems
Benefits
- Base salary of $217,000 to $410,000, depending on level and experience
- Competitive equity
- Hybrid schedule with three days per week in the San Francisco office
- Open to visa transfers, including OPT and H-1B transfers
- Two hires planned for this role, at Staff and Principal level
- High-autonomy environment with direct exposure to engineering and executive leadership
Visa sponsorship record
No public sponsorship records foundWe didn't find H-1B, H-1B1, E-3 or green card (PERM) filings under the name Raydar in the Department of Labor and USCIS data. That doesn't mean the job can't be sponsored — the company may file under a different legal name, be new to sponsorship, or sponsor a visa that isn't in these datasets (for example H-2B or J-1).
Tip: ask the recruiter early, in writing, which visa they sponsor and whether they cover the legal and filing fees.
Which visas can work for this job
Occupation: Software Developers (SOC 15-1252).
- Mentioned in the listing
H-1B, OPT
- H-1B cap-exempt employer
Regular cap-subject employer — a new H-1B needs to win the lottery in March (unless you already hold cap-counted H-1B status).
- TN (citizens of Canada and Mexico)
This kind of role may fit the USMCA profession “Computer Systems Analyst (or Engineer, for engineering-degree holders)” — it depends on the actual duties. No lottery, no cap; you need the matching degree or license.
- E-3 (Australia) and H-1B1 (Chile, Singapore)
Same degree requirement as H-1B, but no lottery and a separate quota that is rarely filled.
- O-1 (extraordinary ability)
For candidates with awards, publications, press, a high salary or critical roles at distinguished organizations. No cap, no lottery; the employer files a petition.
- STEM OPT extension (F-1 students)
Requires an E-Verify employer. We didn't find this company in the E-Verify list — ask HR.
Salary vs prevailing wage
Level III (experienced)Software Developers · San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. Annual prevailing wages set by the Department of Labor (OFLC).
| Level | Prevailing wage | H-1B lottery odds* |
|---|---|---|
| Level I | $137,093 | ~15% |
| Level II | $165,131 | ~31% |
| Level III | $193,149 | ~46% |
| Level IV | $221,187 | ~61% |
This job pays $217,000–$410,000 a year — that's Level III (experienced). In the wage-weighted H-1B lottery a Level III registration gets 3 entries; estimated selection chance about 46% — better than average.
* Odds are DHS projections for the FY2027 wage-weighted lottery (actual results vary by year and employer). Since the FY2027 cap season the H-1B lottery is weighted by wage level: Level I = 1 entry, II = 2, III = 3, IV = 4. The level is set by the offered wage against the prevailing wage for the occupation and worksite. Separately, a $100,000 fee for new H-1B petitions for workers outside the US was announced in 2025; as of September 2026 a federal court ruling keeps it unenforceable while appeals continue — check the current status.
Sources: U.S. Department of Labor OFLC disclosure data (H-1B/H-1B1/E-3 LCA, PERM), OFLC prevailing wage data, USCIS H-1B Employer Data Hub, E-Verify participating employers. Data loaded: LCA FY2024–FY2026, PERM, USCIS Data Hub, OFLC wages; updated 2026-10-03. Employers are matched by name, so records of companies with similar names can occasionally be mixed up. This is general information, not legal advice — talk to an immigration attorney about your case.