Principal Software Architect

Cloaked; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 245,000 - 275,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive PTO

Parental Leave

Wellness stipend

Professional growth fund

Hybrid work model

Home office stipend

Job summary

Cloaked is building a cyber expert at your side to keep you safe and private in the AI age. We seek a Principal Software Architect to own end-to-end platform architecture for cloud-native services and public APIs, providing reference designs and guardrails.

You will lead cross-functional delivery with Product and SRE, define SLOs, and drive scale initiatives to support 10× growth, while mentoring senior engineers and setting standards across security and observability.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree in CS or related field with 3+ years in software/systems engineering.
• Alternative: Bachelor's degree with 5+ years in software/systems engineering.
• Experience designing distributed or cloud-native systems and public APIs.
• Experience with relational and NoSQL databases.
• CI/CD and automated testing practices.
• Experience providing technical leadership or mentoring.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end platform architecture for cloud-native services and public APIs.
• Define SLOs, incident postmortems, and collaborate with SRE to meet targets.
• Plan scale initiatives to support 10× growth; drive capacity and cost roadmaps.
• Lead cross-functional delivery with Product and SRE; decompose into milestones.
• Chair design reviews; enforce engineering standards across security, CI/CD, testing, and observability.
• Evaluate platforms and tooling; run PoCs and phased rollouts.

Skills

Cloud-native architecture

Technical leadership

Mentorship

SRE collaboration

Security-by-design

Programming languages (Python/Java/Go)

Education

Master’s degree in CS or related field

Bachelor’s degree in CS or related field

Tools

AWS/Azure/GCP

Django/FastAPI/NestJS

CI/CD tooling

Container orchestration

IaC

Relational & NoSQL databases

Job description

Cloaked is building a cyber expert at your side - one that watches, advises, and acts to keep you safe and private in the age of AI. 600k+ paying members already use Cloaked to take back control of their data, their identity, and who can reach them: masked emails, phone numbers, and payment cards, data removal from broker sites, and an AI voice agent that screens calls before they ring through.

We've protected 10M+ identities, screened 50M+ calls, and removed 1B+ records from the data brokers who profit off personal information. Backed by a $375M Series B, we're now building the agents that turn detection into action - for individuals, families, and the companies that want to protect their people.

About the Role

We are seeking a Principal Software Architect, to own end-to-end platform architecture for cloud-native services and public APIs; provide reference designs and guardrails.

What will you do?

• Set reliability and performance standards; define SLOs and error budgets; run incident postmortems with action items; partner with SRE to meet SLOs.

• Plan and execute scale initiatives to support 10× user and traffic growth; drive capacity, cost, and resilience roadmaps.

• Lead cross-functional delivery with Product and SRE; decompose initiatives into milestones and technical workplans.

• Chair design and architecture reviews; publish and enforce engineering standards across security, CI/CD, testing, and observability.

• Evaluate and introduce platforms, patterns, and tooling; run proofs-of-concept and phased rollouts.

• Lead architecture for core platform capabilities and future domains as assigned.

• Define technical approach and non-functional requirements; review designs and ensure implementation meets performance, security, and cost targets.

• Define cloud reference stacks; require IaC, container orchestration, and observability baselines; guide implementation with platform teams.

• Provide technical mentorship to senior engineers; codify best practices.

Requirements

• This position requires a Master’s degree (or equivalent foreign degree) in Computer Science, Applied Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a closely related field and three (3) years of experience as a Software Engineer or a similar position responsible for software or systems engineering.

• Alternatively, will accept a Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent foreign degree) in Computer Science, Applied Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a closely related field and five (5) years of experience as a Software Engineer or a similar position responsible for software or systems engineering.

• Experience, which may have been gained concurrently with primary requirement above must include two (2) years of experience with:

  • Designing distributed or cloud-native systems and public APIs.

  • Working with both relational and NoSQL databases.

  • CI/CD and automated testing practices.

  • Tools:

    • At least one language including Python/Java/Go or equivalent

    • At least one web framework including Django/FastAPI/NestJS or equivalent

    • Cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP) and IaC

    • Containers and observability

    • Security-by-design practices for cloud applications

    • Qualified applicants will also have experience providing technical leadership or mentoring.

• Position requires approximately 10% domestic travel

• Salary is $245,000-275,000 per year for 40-hour work week

What we offer

Cloaked is a well-funded Series B startup based out of NYC.
Although we are a distributed team, the NYC team operates with a hybrid model. We have two floors of our building, with two state of the art kitchens packed with drinks, snacks and everything else you'd need to get through the day.
The Cloaked team has diverse interests and so we frequently embark on team outings and go out for socials!

Compensation and Benefits

We offer above market rate pay and equity based off of the market's best commercially available data. Your compensation will be a combination of salary, bonus and equity.
For full-time US employees, we offer a comprehensive benefits package: medical, dental and vision with Cloaked covering the majority of employee premiums, company-paid basic life, and a 401(k) with company match.
We offer flexible work arrangements and the ability to work remotely as needed. Cloaked provides a home office stipend in addition to a new company laptop (and other tech depending on the role).

Perks

Competitive PTO: PTO, floating holidays and sick days - and we push people to actually use them. We see time off as a preventative burnout measure, not a balance to hoard.

Parental Leave: Paid leave for all new parents - birth, adoption, or foster placement - because the people building privacy deserve time with their families.

Monthly wellness & meals stipend: Used for any kind of physical, mental or emotional care you'd like to take for yourself, be it a gym membership, a meditation app, or time with a personal trainer - plus lunch and coffee during the workday.

Professional Growth: Opportunities for career development and personal growth are provided to all employees who seek to further their knowledge and capabilities through an unlimited professional development fund. Additionally team members are encouraged to regularly attend conferences and industry events.

We are really excited about having you join our mission-driven team and help us build the future of online privacy!