Jobs / United States / Natera INC
Principal Software Engineer
Natera INC · 🇺🇸 South San Francisco
Sponsorship verdict
Sponsorship possible
One solid signal, not two — worth applying, and worth asking about sponsorship early.
- Employer is on a government sponsor recordThe US Department of Labor certified 48 H-1B/E-3 labor condition applications for this employer between Oct 2025 and Jun 2026 (latest Jun 2026) — the step every H-1B hire needs first. USCIS also records 12 H-1B approvals in FY2023. Source: LCA disclosure data (US Department of Labor (OFLC)).
- The posting doesn’t mention sponsorshipSilence isn’t a refusal — ask the recruiter before investing much time.
- No salary bar for this routeH-1B has no fixed salary bar: the employer must pay at least the prevailing wage for the role and area. Cap-subject employers enter a lottery weighted by wage level. Source: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/29/2025-23853/weighted-selection-process-for-registrants-and-petitioners-seeking-to-file-cap-subject-h-1b, rules effective 2026-02-27.
- What Natera INC paid sponsored hires in similar roles4 certified filings for “Staff Software Engineer - Revenue Cycle Management” (Software Developers) in CA: $162k–$209k, median $175k. Most were filed at wage level II (50%) — 2 lottery entries, ≈31% projected selection odds for cap-subject employers. Source: US Department of Labor LCA disclosure data (Oct 2025 – Jun 2026).
- Confirmed live todayWhen a source last listed this job as open.
US H-1B: cap-subject employers enter a lottery weighted by wage level — Level I gets 1 entry, Level IV gets 4 (DHS projected selection odds ≈15% at Level I to ≈61% at Level IV). Universities and non-profit research employers are cap-exempt. The $100,000 fee for new petitions from abroad is currently blocked by a court order (appeal pending).
A verdict summarises public evidence; it is not legal advice and never a guarantee — the employer and the immigration authority decide. Sign in to factor in where you can already work.
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Sponsor Radar — Natera INC
The US Department of Labor certified 48 H-1B/E-3 labor condition applications for this employer between Oct 2025 and Jun 2026 (latest Jun 2026) — the step every H-1B hire needs first. USCIS also records 12 H-1B approvals in FY2023. Source: LCA disclosure data (US Department of Labor (OFLC)).
Past sponsorship or register membership never guarantees sponsorship for this vacancy or for you. Full Sponsor Radar for Natera INC →
About the role
Job Title: Principal Software Engineer Location: South San Francisco, CA preferred; Remote optional Job Type: Full-time About the Role We're seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join Natera's R&D team. We build the cloud infrastructure, workflow platforms, and data platforms that R&D uses to do its science - including a Kubernetes-based workflow execution platform, a custom R&D LIMS system, and a set of supporting tools that routinely handle production-scale workloads. This is a senior technical role. You'll own the full architecture, implementation, and delivery of large projects across our platform. You'll partner with the team lead on roadmap and tough technical calls, mentor mid-level engineers, and help the team find the right solution for the problem - not the most elaborate one. We're a small team (4 engineers + lead) with broad scope, and we're heavily AI-augmented: every engineer uses Claude Code / Cursor as a daily tool, and we build our own AI tooling (custom plugins, MCP servers, agents) to multiply ourselves. Responsibilities • Architecture & Delivery: Own the design, implementation, and delivery of major initiatives across our platform. Take fuzzy problems through to shipped, working software used in production. • Technical Leadership: Lead architecture and design reviews. Help the team find the right solution for the problem and avoid unnecessary complexity. Influence technical decisions across the team. • Mentorship: Mentor mid-level engineers through code review, design docs, and pairing. Raise the engineering bar by example. • AI-Native Development: Build and improve our AI-coding tooling alongside the rest of the team. Help us push the frontier of agent-driven software development inside the company. • Cross-Functional Partnership: Work with bioinformaticians, scientists, and other R&D engineers to understand their needs and translate them into platform capabilities. Partner with the team lead on roadmap, prioritization, and tough technical calls. Required Experience • Years of Experience: 10+ years of professional software engineering experience across a range of systems and problem types. • Cloud Infrastructure: Production experience with a major cloud platform (AWS preferred; GCP or Azure equivalent). You've designed for a cloud, not just deployed to one. • Container Orchestration: Production experience with Kubernetes (or equivalent). Comfortable reasoning about cluster design, scheduling, networking, and workload patterns. • Infrastructure as Code: Production experience with Terraform (or equivalent). Comfortable owning shared modules and multi-environment deployments. • Programming: Strong proficiency in at least one general-purpose language (Python, Go, Java, or similar). Comfortable picking up new languages as needed — and comfortable using AI tooling to accelerate that. • End-User Software: You've shipped software to end users (internal or external). You understand the realities of running a product — incongruent user feedback, competing priorities, the gap between requirements and what users actually need. • Team Leadership: You've led an engineering team before and have mentored junior engineers. You're comfortable being the technical owner of multi-quarter initiatives. • Startup Background: You've worked in fast-moving environments where results need to be delivered quickly. Scrappy, MVP-first, comfortable shipping in days rather than weeks. • Familiarity with our tech stack: AWS, Kubernetes, Python, Go, Groovy, Terraform, Helm, Nextflow, WDL, Django, React. How You Work • Product-Minded: You think in terms of business and user problems, not tickets. You ask "should we build this?" before "how do I build this?" • Calibrated Judgement: You know when to move fast and break t