Principal Software Engineer, Cloud Networking Platform

SoFi•San Francisco, CA

About The Position

SoFi is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to own the long-term networking vision for the company. The role sits on the Cloud Platform team and has company-wide scope, shaping the cloud networks that carry member interactions. The engineer will define the target cloud network architecture and a multi-year roadmap, including multi-region and multi-cluster traffic management, progressive delivery at the network layer, and resilient, secure, high-performing networking. The role also guides strategy for SoFi’s small on-premises colocation footprint and its connections to the cloud. This is a hands-on, high-influence position that leads networking initiatives from strategy through implementation. The engineer will partner across engineering, security, risk and compliance, SRE, architecture, and business leadership. They will help establish practical, automatable network policies and standards, and provide strategic guidance across Cloud Platform areas including compute, Kubernetes, identity, and infrastructure as code. The role leads the use of AI in networking and infrastructure, designing automation, agentic workflows, and guardrails for faster and safer infrastructure changes in a regulated environment. The Principal Software Engineer will advise infrastructure and technology leadership, lead design reviews and critical incident response, define network SLOs and outcome metrics, improve observability, and mentor senior engineers and emerging technical leaders.

Requirements

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
10+ years of professional engineering experience.
2+ years in a senior technical leadership role at Staff level or above, with company-wide or multi-department scope.
Deep expertise in networking fundamentals and protocols, including TCP/IP, BGP, DNS, TLS, HTTP, and L4/L7 load balancing.
Deep experience designing and operating large-scale, internet-facing networks, including edge, CDN, WAF, and DDoS protection.
Deep expertise in AWS networking and multi-account, multi-region design.
Strong experience with Kubernetes networking, ingress and gateway patterns, and service meshes, including multi-cluster topologies.
Proven experience with traffic management for progressive delivery, such as weighted routing, canary releases, and automated rollback.
Hands-on experience using AI to automate infrastructure or operations work.
Programming skills in one or more languages such as Go or Python.
Excellent experience with infrastructure as code and network automation.
Demonstrated track record of setting technical direction across organizations and completing multi-quarter, cross-functional initiatives.
Experience leading responses to high-severity, customer-impacting incidents.
Exceptional written and verbal communication, including presenting complex technical strategy and tradeoffs to executives, product managers, and engineers.
Exceptional interpersonal skills, including building trust and driving alignment with non-technical partners and across organizational boundaries.

Nice To Haves

Experience with on-premises data center networking and hybrid connectivity to public cloud.
Experience with zero trust networking, network segmentation, and workload identity.
Experience building agentic tooling, MCP servers, or AI-guided automation for infrastructure or network operations.
Experience with PKI and certificate automation at scale.
Experience applying security standards and compliance frameworks such as SOC 2, PCI DSS, or FFIEC to network design in regulated industries.

Responsibilities

Own the long-term technical vision and multi-year roadmap for networking across SoFi.
Lead the architecture of member-facing networking, including multi-region and multi-cluster networking.
Enable incremental rollout and progressive delivery at the network layer.
Set direction for service-to-service and multi-account connectivity.
Drive network automation end to end.
Guide strategy for the on-premises colocation footprint and its connectivity to the cloud.
Lead the use of AI to design, operate, and change networks and infrastructure.
Define guardrails, policy checks, and success criteria for safe AI-guided infrastructure changes in a regulated environment.
Build reusable AI tools and patterns for other infrastructure teams.
Advise Infrastructure and Technology leadership on networking strategy, roadmaps, investment, and vendor and build-versus-buy decisions.
Champion AI adoption across infrastructure.
Lead design reviews for network-impacting changes and drive clear decisions on consequential choices.
Partner with Security, Compliance, and Risk on network policies and standards.
Serve as a subject matter expert and lead resolver for company-critical network incidents.
Define networking SLOs and outcome metrics, including member-facing latency, availability, and change lead time.
Build network observability to detect issues before they affect members and partners.
Mentor Staff and Senior Staff engineers and emerging technical leaders.
Raise the bar for design and code review.