Principal/Staff Software Engineer - Nexthink - Lausanne, Switzerland

We are looking for a Principal/Staff Backend Software Engineer to lead the technical strategy, architecture, and implementation of our large-scale AI chat agent platform. This system is designed to support 20+ million users globally, making it one of the most ambitious backend initiatives at Nexthink. As a Principal/Staff Engineer, you will go beyond implementation: you will set technical direction, influence cross-team design decisions, and serve as a trusted advisor to both engineering leadership and product. You’ll tackle problems of scale, reliability, and performance while partnering with AI/ML, Infra, and Security teams to build production-ready AI experiences. This is a high-impact, high-ownership role where you’ll be entrusted to make foundational architectural decisions and mentor senior engineers, ensuring Nexthink’s AI systems are built to scale with the future. Responsibilities include defining and driving technical vision and architectural strategy for the AI chat backend platform, leading design of highly scalable, low-latency, distributed systems supporting 20M+ global users, and providing technical leadership across multiple teams. Qualifications include 10+ years of backend engineering experience, 3+ years in Staff or Principal roles, expertise in Java (17+), Python, or Node.js, cloud-native architectures (AWS or equivalent), Kubernetes/ECS, and containerized deployments. Deep understanding of API design, streaming data, and event-driven systems is required. Nice to have skills include Java frameworks (Spring Boot, Micronaut), streaming platforms (Kafka, Pulsar, Flink, Spark), productionizing LLM-powered systems, multi-region deployments, performance optimization, GitOps, Terraform, CI/CD, enterprise chat systems, and data security frameworks. Nexthink offers a permanent contract, competitive salary, hybrid work, unlimited vacation, office with Lake Geneva view, fitness access, public transport reimbursement, language classes, and team events. We are committed to diversity and inclusion, with over 75 nationalities. Join us to shape the future of digital employee experience management.