https://coles.codes/tags/principal-engineer/Recent content in Principal-Engineer on coles.codesHugoen-usWed, 17 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://coles.codes/posts/the-shapeshifting-engineer/Wed, 17 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://coles.codes/posts/the-shapeshifting-engineer/<p>This post is for the mids, seniors, and principals trying to work out what our jobs look like now that the machine writes the code. If you&rsquo;re early in your career and wondering whether the whole thing is still worth pursuing, that&rsquo;s a different conversation and I&rsquo;ll write it up separately soon.</p> <p>I&rsquo;ve been building software for over a decade, and these days I use AI coding tools every working day. The velocity is genuinely something. I&rsquo;ve shipped features in an afternoon that would have taken me most of a week, and cleared backlog items that sat untouched for a year because the effort never justified the payoff.</p>