Principal Software Engineer, Cloud Networking Platform

SoFi•Seattle, WA

8h•$198,400 - $341,000

About The Position

SoFi is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to own the long-term networking vision for the company. The role is part of the Cloud Platform team, with company-wide scope spanning the cloud networks that support member interactions. SoFi operates almost entirely in AWS, and the position covers the internet edge, DNS, CDN and WAF, load balancing and ingress, VPC and multi-account connectivity, service-to-service traffic, and partner connectivity. The engineer will define a north-star cloud network architecture and a multi-year path to deliver it. This includes multi-region and multi-cluster traffic management, progressive delivery at the network layer, and designing resilient, secure, high-performance networking. The role also guides the strategy for SoFi’s small on-premises colocation footprint and its cloud connectivity. The position leads the use of AI in networking and infrastructure, designing automation, agentic workflows, and guardrails to enable faster and safer infrastructure changes. It is hands-on and highly influential, involving collaboration with engineering, security, risk and compliance, SRE, architecture, and business leaders. The engineer will advise on network policies and standards, provide strategic guidance across the broader Cloud Platform, resolve critical incidents, and mentor senior technical talent.

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, including 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.
Proven programming skills in one or more languages such as Go or Python, and excellent experience with infrastructure as code and network automation.
Demonstrated track record of setting technical direction across organizations and delivering multi-quarter, cross-functional initiatives to completion.
Experience leading responses to high-severity, customer-impacting incidents.
Exceptional written and verbal communication, including the ability to present complex technical strategy and tradeoffs to executives, product managers, and engineers.
Exceptional interpersonal skills and ability to build trust and drive 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 for networking across SoFi and define a north-star architecture with an incremental, multi-year roadmap.
Lead architecture for 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, and drive network automation end to end.
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 tooling and patterns for adoption by other infrastructure teams.
Advise Infrastructure and Technology leadership on networking strategy, roadmaps, investment, and vendor and build-versus-buy choices.
Champion AI adoption across infrastructure and lead design reviews for network-impacting changes.
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, and raise the bar for design and code review.