Principal Product Engineer - Interview Innovation

Compensation (Base Salary (GeoLo 2)): 216,000 – 227,540 USD per year Compensation (Base Salary (GeoLo 3)): 192,000 – 202,258 USD per year Compensation (Base Salary (GeoLo 4)): 168,000 – 176,976 USD per year

We're Karat, the world's largest interviewing company.

Karat is transforming organizations around the world. We provide a powerful system for technical leaders at companies like PayPal, Atlassian, and Citi who want to take control of how they hire top engineers, elevate their teams and contractors, and stay ahead. At the core of Karat’s system are live, expert-led interviews, analytics designed to give leaders maximum visibility, and the most robust interview performance dataset in the world.

Come join our Product team

Our Product team is committed to driving forward Karat’s mission to make interviews predictive, fair, and enjoyable. We are focused on providing deeper value to engineering and talent leaders, hiring managers, recruiters, candidates, and Interview Engineers.

What you will do

As Principal Product Engineer, you will own the product vision, strategy, and hands-on execution for the technical assessment and interview-innovation side of our platform. This is a hybrid role built for someone who thinks like a product leader and codes like an engineer — you ship prototypes, spike on new AI techniques, and translate that firsthand experience into products that evolve alongside how software development is actually changing.

You'll collaborate across engineering, content, design, and go-to-market teams to deliver high-impact solutions that transform how companies evaluate technical talent in an AI-transformed world.

Responsibilities

Product Strategy & Innovation: Define the roadmap for our AI-driven assessment and interview-innovation capabilities; evaluate how emerging AI techniques can strengthen our signal on a candidate's technical capabilities; help shape Karat's point of view in the evolving technical assessment market.

Hands-On Technical Execution: Write code, rapidly prototype new interview formats and assessments, and validate them directly with engineers. Use your direct, daily experience with AI-assisted development tools (Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code, etc.) to prototype new interview formats, stress-test product assumptions, and make faster, more credible decisions alongside engineering.

Product Development & Execution: Prioritize features based on customer needs and business objectives; partner with engineering, content, and UX to ship high-quality, technically credible solutions.

Analytics & Insights: Analyze assessment data to improve accuracy; design experiments to test new interview and assessment approaches; use our database of hundreds of thousands of candidate interviews to sharpen our signal on performance.

Market & Customer Focus: Track performance metrics and identify improvement opportunities; partner with Go-to-Market teams on expansion strategies; build compelling business cases for new AI-enabled offerings.

Cross-Functional Leadership: Work closely with engineers as a peer, not just a stakeholder; evaluate AI susceptibility of current offerings and implement appropriate safeguards; collaborate with content teams on formats for complex technical roles.

The experience you will bring

• 8+ years of combined product management and software engineering experience, with meaningful, hands-on time in both disciplines
• Actively coding — whether on side projects, internal tools, or as part of your current role; you use modern AI-assisted development tools (Cursor, Copilot, vibe coding workflows) and have a genuine, firsthand understanding of how engineers build software today
• CS degree or equivalent technical foundation; you can read and write code across common languages and are comfortable navigating a real codebase
• Demonstrated experience defining, launching, selling, and scaling successful products with measurable business impact, ideally from the ground up
• Comfortable holding your own in technical conversations with senior engineering leaders (CTOs, VPs of Engineering) at large enterprises about evaluating core software development fundamentals
• Strong track record of working directly with B2B customers in a SaaS environment — comfortable in customer discovery calls, QBRs, and translating enterprise feedback into product decisions
• Excellent communication skills; able to translate complex technical concepts for diverse stakeholders and lead cross-functional teams
• Track record of executive presentations: communicating business value and product strategy to gain executive buy-in

This position is only available to candidates residing in the following U.S. states: FL, IL, MA, MO, OR, TX, and WA. While our team operates 100% remotely, we are currently limiting hiring to these specific locations. Applications from other states will not be considered at this time.

Immigration sponsorship is not available.

Compensation Varies by Geographic Location

At Karat, salary ranges for each U.S.-based position are determined by the employee's work location. We structure our compensation into geographic tiers based on market data and regional economic factors.

Please refer to our geographic classification document to view which tier applies to your location. If your area isn't included in our classification system, please connect with your Recruiter for specific details. These geographic classifications may be adjusted periodically.

Base Salary (GeoLo 2) $216,000 — $227,540.70 USD

Base Salary (GeoLo 3) $192,000 — $202,258.40 USD

Base Salary (GeoLo 4) $168,000 — $176,976.10 USD

Additional Information

By applying for a position, you consent to the processing of your personal data in accordance with Karat’s Employee and Contractor Privacy Notice found here.

Statement of Inclusivity

In keeping with our beliefs and goals, no employee or applicant will face discrimination or harassment based on: race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, age, gender, marital/domestic partner status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability status, or veteran status. Above and beyond discrimination and harassment based on “protected categories,” we also strive to prevent other subtler forms of inappropriate behavior (i.e., stereotyping) from ever gaining a foothold in our office. Whether blatant or hidden, barriers to success have no place at Karat.

We value a diverse workforce: people of color, womxn, and LGBTQIA+ individuals are strongly encouraged to apply.

If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know at recruiter contact.