Principal Software Engineer, Platform Engineering

CloudBees Inc•Denver, CO

1d•$200,000 - $230,000•Hybrid

About The Position

CloudBees is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join its Platform Engineering team and develop Go microservices running in AWS. The role directs, leads, and contributes to building and operating the platform, which underpins the company’s products and software delivery capabilities. The successful candidate brings deep back-end engineering expertise and a product mindset, recognizing that platform quality shapes what teams can build and what customers experience. The engineer will assess the existing platform architecture and codebase, form evidence-based recommendations, define a measurable technical roadmap, and personally deliver critical-path code, refactors, performance improvements, and stability fixes. They will earn the trust of an established team, set direction and standards, unblock difficult problems, and lead rigorous design and code reviews. The role also establishes durable engineering practices for testing, interfaces, service boundaries, and releases; advances observability through metrics, structured logs, and tracing; and documents architecture decisions and their rationale. CloudBees values candidates who are experienced with agentic AI and coding agents, can design resilient distributed systems, and balance delivery speed with correctness.

Requirements

12 or more years of relevant experience as a founding, principal, or staff engineer.
Experience building and operating a complex production microservices platform, including explaining failures, their causes, and how they were addressed.
Extensive distributed-systems experience, including concurrency, event-driven architectures, message buses, and failure modes.
Experience taking over a complex codebase and measurably improving it.
Continued hands-on contribution of code that ships to production every week.
Deep back-end engineering expertise and the ability to develop microservices using Go and operate them in AWS.
Ability to own outcomes for an entire system, not only an individual component.
Strong emotional intelligence, openness to changing one's mind based on evidence, and the ability to give constructive critique.
Preference for simple solutions over unnecessarily clever ones.
Customer-focused approach, including building customer relationships and adapting decisions based on customer feedback.
High agency and willingness to take ownership, make decisions, and move work forward without waiting to be asked.
Commitment to quality, urgency, learning through iteration, and direct constructive feedback.

Nice To Haves

Led a simplification or stabilization effort on an existing SaaS platform.
Built or operated CI/CD systems, workflow engines, or developer platforms.
Contributed to open source in the Kubernetes, Tekton, NATS, Jenkins, or broader DevOps ecosystem.
Background in identity and access management, multi-tenancy, or regulated environments.
Experience with LLM-powered features or MCP tooling in production backends.

Responsibilities

Understand the existing platform code and architecture and develop evidence-based views on its strengths, weaknesses, and improvement opportunities.
Define the technical roadmap with measurable goals and sequence work to deliver incremental value.
Personally implement critical-path refactors, performance improvements, stability fixes, and other difficult production code.
Build trust with the established team by listening, explaining reasoning, and demonstrating through code.
Set technical direction and standards, guide execution, and unblock difficult engineering problems.
Lead design reviews and code reviews with rigor and honesty.
Establish development practices for testing, interfaces, service boundaries, and release discipline.
Drive observability through metrics, structured logs, and tracing, and use it to identify root causes.
Document architecture decisions and their reasoning.

Benefits

Unlimited flexible PTO combining vacation, sick time, and personal days.
Paid U.S. holidays and two dedicated Bee-Giving volunteer days.
Medical, dental, and vision plan options available starting on the employee's start date.
Company contribution to an HSA for employees enrolled in an HDHP plan.
Competitive 401(k) company match with pre-tax and Roth options.
Company-paid life and AD&D, short-term disability, and long-term disability protection.
Company-covered Employee Assistance Program.
Company-sponsored Headspace account and U.S. Care Concierge service.
Monthly work-from-home stipend.
Stock options and variable bonuses, including a bonus plan tied to goals and company growth.
Hybrid office work opportunity for Denver employees.
A team that invests in employees' growth.