Principal Data Platform Software Engineer - Distributed Systems - Kubernetes

What you get to do in this role:

• As a Principal Engineer, you will help to set the technical direction for our cloud-native platform across multiple engineering teams and organizations. You will be part of a team defining the architecture and standards for how Kubernetes, distributed systems, and hyperscaler infrastructure are built and operated at scale.
• You will assist in solving the hardest, most ambiguous technical problems in the platform domain — multi-cloud topology, control-plane design, workload isolation, identity and trust fabric, and reliability at the scale of hundreds of clusters and dozens of product workloads.
• You will work with a team of principal engineers and engineering fellows, and other senior technical leaders to help drive consistent architectural decisions and the adoption of best practices across the entire platform ecosystem.
• You will assist in identifying and mitigating the biggest technical risks in initiatives with C-suite visibility.
• You will help mentor staff and senior engineers and shape the next generation of the organization’s technical leadership.

To be successful in this role you have:

• Experience leveraging or critically thinking about how to integrate AI into engineering and platform work — whether using AI-powered tooling, automating operational workflows, building agentic systems for fleet visibility and operations, or reasoning about AI’s impact on how infrastructure is built and run.
• 15+ years of experience with a Bachelor degree or 12+ years with a Masters degree, designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems in production, with deep expertise running Kubernetes at scale (multi-cluster, multi-region, multi-tenant).
• Hands-on, authoritative experience across one or more major hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP), including their managed Kubernetes offerings (EKS, AKS, GKE) and the networking, IAM, and capacity tradeoffs that come with each.
• A proven track record of providing technical leadership across multiple engineering teams, influencing architecture and direction without relying on positional authority.
• Deep expertise in the core building blocks of a modern platform: the operator/controller pattern, infrastructure-as-code and control planes (e.g., Crossplane), GitOps-based delivery, container networking (CNI), and service mesh.
• Strong programming skills in Go and fluency across the cloud-native ecosystem.

It also helps if you have:

• Experience designing identity and trust fabrics for distributed systems — workload identity, mTLS, and standards such as SPIFFE/SPIRE.
• Experience with multi-tenant workload isolation and runtime security (e.g., Kata Containers, sandboxed runtimes).
• Experience building and operating platforms for regulated or federal markets (FedRAMP, air-gapped or self-hosted distribution, OCI bundling).
• Experience with observability at scale — metrics, tracing, and SLO-driven operations across a large fleet.
• A platform-as-product mindset: treating internal engineering teams as customers and the platform as a product with a roadmap, contracts, and a delivery pipeline.

For positions in this location, we offer a base pay of $240,100 - $420,200, plus equity (when applicable), variable/incentive compensation and benefits. Sales positions generally offer a competitive On Target Earnings (OTE) incentive compensation structure. Please note that the base pay shown is a guideline, and individual total compensation will vary based on factors such as qualifications, skill level, competencies, and work location. We also offer health plans, including flexible spending accounts, a 401(k) Plan with company match, ESPP, matching donations, a flexible time away plan and family leave programs. Compensation is based on the geographic location in which the role is located and is subject to change based on work location.