Principal Product Engineer

Why this role is special

Budibase is building the platform for AI-powered operations. Thousands of teams use Budibase to build internal tools, automate workflows, and increasingly deploy AI agents into real operational processes. We’re building a future where agents, apps, workflows, approvals, and humans work together to get real work done.

We’re looking for a Principal Product Engineer to help define that future.

This is a high-impact role for an experienced engineer who wants to shape both product and technical direction. You’ll work directly with the founders and engineering team to solve some of the hardest problems in AI-powered software: reliability, orchestration, permissions, observability, approvals, integrations, and trust.

This is an individual contributor leadership role. While you’ll mentor engineers, your primary focus will be technical leadership, architecture, product development, and execution rather than people management.

While Budibase is a remote-first company, this role involves close collaboration with the founders on product direction, technical strategy, and platform architecture. We’re therefore looking for someone who can spend 2-3 days per week in our Belfast office.

Why this is a rare opportunity

• Work on AI-native product architecture at the centre of Budibase’s strategy.
• Help define how agents, workflows, apps, and automations work together.
• Build in the open on a product with thousands of users and an active open-source community.
• Work directly with founders on product strategy and technical direction.
• Join at a pivotal point as Budibase evolves into an AI-native platform.
• Competitive salary, equity, and benefits.

Company Description

Budibase is an open-source platform for building applications, workflows, automations, and AI-powered operational systems. Teams use Budibase to connect to their data, build internal tools, automate business processes, and increasingly deploy AI-powered workflows that operate across the systems they already use. We’re focused on a simple idea: operational work should move faster. Whether that’s a human completing a task, an automation executing a process, or an AI agent working with tools, permissions, approvals, and human oversight.

What you’ll work on

You’ll help shape the technical foundations of Budibase’s next chapter.

That could include:

• Designing the architecture behind agents, workflows, approvals, and automation systems.
• Building platform capabilities that support reliability, observability, permissions, and governance.
• Improving how engineers build, deploy, and maintain product capabilities.
• Taking ownership of engineering challenges that affect multiple teams and ensuring they are resolved.
• Working across the Budibase builder experience, backend services, integrations, and AI infrastructure.
  
• Solving technical challenges that directly impact product velocity and customer outcomes.
• Mentoring engineers through technical leadership, code reviews, and architectural guidance.
• Helping define technical strategy across the company.

You might be a great fit if you:

• Have significant experience building and shipping production software.
• Have strong TypeScript and JavaScript experience.
• Have built complex products, platforms, developer tools, workflow systems, or SaaS applications.
• Have led large technical initiatives and influenced technical direction.
• Enjoy mentoring engineers and raising the effectiveness of those around you.
• Can balance technical excellence with product outcomes.
• Are comfortable working through ambiguity and helping define solutions.
• Are excited by AI and curious about how it will transform software development and operations.

Useful experience

You do not need to tick every box. Relevant experience could include:

• Building developer tools, workflow platforms, internal tools, low-code platforms, or infrastructure products.
• Working with AI systems, LLMs, agents, tool calling, MCP, retrieval systems, or evaluation frameworks.
• Scaling SaaS products and engineering organisations.
• Contributing to open-source software.
• Working closely with product teams to shape product direction and strategy.

What success looks like

Within your 6 months you will have:

• Shipped meaningful product capabilities used by customers.
• Helped define Budibase’s AI platform architecture.
• Increased engineering velocity through better systems, tooling, and technical practices.
• Solved important technical challenges that were slowing execution.
  
• Become a trusted technical partner to the founders and leadership team.
  
• Helped shape the future direction of the Budibase platform.
  
  

Benefits

• Work on one of Europe’s most ambitious AI product challenges.
  
• Help shape Budibase’s technical direction alongside the founders.
  
• Join an open-source company with thousands of users worldwide.
  
• £90,000–£110,000 salary plus equity. 
  
• Flexible hybrid working focused on outcomes, not hours.
  
• Apple hardware
• Home office budget.
  
• Work tools: Slack, Github, Cursor, Codex, Gmail/Google workspace, Datadog, AWS.
• Annual company offsites, including recent trips to Lisbon and Amsterdam.
  
• Open, transparent, low-ego culture.
  
• Real influence over product strategy, architecture, and company direction.

If you’re excited about building AI-native products and helping shape the future direction of Budibase, we’d love to hear from you.