Lead Principal Software Engineer, Systems Architect

SoundCloud • New York, NY

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

SoundCloud empowers artists and fans to connect and share through music. Founded in 2007, SoundCloud is an artist-first platform empowering artists to build and grow their careers by providing them with the most progressive tools, services, and resources. With over 400+ million tracks from 40 million artists, the future of music is SoundCloud.
SoundCloud is looking for a rare technical hybrid: A systems architect to own the long term blueprint of our core application API and platform, and a SWAT Team Lead who can dive in and execute targeted projects. A key strategic partner to the CTO, you are the person who finds the signal in the noise of a legacy codebase, conceives a better overall plan, and then personally leads the 'strike team' that delivers the changes. This is a role for an engineer who is equally comfortable in a high-level design session as they are deep in the trenches of a production monolith. In this role, you will apply your technical expertise and leadership to shape the architecture, reliability, and performance of systems used by millions of fans, creators, and partner integrations worldwide.
You will drive scalable API design, cloud-native infrastructure, and operational excellence while collaborating across Product, Engineering, Data, and Security teams. You will define the paved road for SoundCloud's 200+ engineers, ensuring architectural standards that enable scalability and velocity while reducing risk. You will also be part of a small group leading the charge in architecting the agentic workflows and LLM-assisted systems that will allow us to deliver features at 10x the speed of traditional teams. We are seeking someone who is passionate about building best-in-class APIs and distributed systems, mentoring engineers, and fostering a culture of technical excellence and innovation while adopting the most impactful AI-powered software engineering practices.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience with a proven track record of entering "unknown-unknown" environments and bringing architectural order to chaos in high-scale distributed systems.
• Deep experience with REST/GraphQL APIs, microservices, caching, databases, and cloud infrastructure (AWS and/or GCP).
• Strong mentoring and team development skills, with ability to influence cross-functional engineering and product teams.
• A systems thinker with the heart of a hacker. You must be equally comfortable whiteboarding a 3-year roadmap as you are in a high-pressure war room debugging a production bottleneck.
• Proven experience leading 'strike teams' or 'SWAT units' in high-scale environments where you were personally responsible for both the diagnostic and the delivery

Responsibilities

• Jump into highly complex legacy systems to understand not only the current state but identifying root causes of architectural friction and a path forward.
• Transition seamlessly from deep-dive debugging to high-level system design, conceiving and socializing the overall plan for SoundCloud’s API and core infrastructure.
• Lead from the trenches by writing foundational, high-performance code that sets the gold standard for engineering excellence.
• Leverage agentic workflows and AI-assisted engineering as a force multiplier to map legacy logic and accelerate the modernization of core systems at 10x the speed of traditional methods. Help establish guardrails, guidelines, and knowledge bases so these agents will act with efficiency and safety for you and the other engineering teams.
• Ensure that throughout its evolution, the platform is performant, scalable, reliable, and malleable. The goal is long term stability, reduced risk, and higher velocity, improved visibility, and rapid experimentation.
• Partner with other senior engineers as we define and build the next generation of SoundCloud’s systems.
• Collaborate with Product, Frontend, Data, Security, and Platform teams to deliver solutions aligned with business and user needs.
• Partner with the CTO and other key technical leads in the company to identify the most critical projects

Benefits

• Comprehensive health benefits including medical, dental, and vision plans, as well as mental health resources
• Robust 401k program
• Employee Equity Plan
• Generous professional development allowance
• Interested in a gym membership, photography course or book? We have a Creativity and Wellness benefit!
• Flexible vacation and public holiday policy where you can take up to 35 days of PTO annually
• 16 paid weeks for all parents (birthing and non-birthing), regardless of gender, to welcome newborns, adopted and foster children
• Various snacks, goodies, and 2 free lunches weekly when at the office

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 251-500 employees