Principal Software Engineer

DocuSign, Inc.; California; On-site; USD 212,100 - 342,650; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Paid Time Off

Paid Parental Leave

Full Health Benefits

Retirement Plans

Learning and Development

Compassionate Care Leave

Job summary

DocuSign, Inc. is seeking a Principal SRE to transform its systems towards an Intelligent Agreement Management platform. This individual contributor role emphasizes engineering excellence and high reliability.

The ideal candidate will possess over 15 years of experience, primarily in software engineering, with proven skills in Kubernetes, Terraform, and incident management.

Remote work is a possibility, and a competitive salary range is provided with additional company benefits.

Qualifications

• Experience with large-scale distributed systems and software engineering.
• Proficiency in Go or Python.
• Proven technical leadership in building active-active distributed systems.

Responsibilities

• Lead and code with the team.
• Advocate for reliability as a product feature.
• Define the Golden Paths for Cloud migration.

Skills

Software engineering experience

Incident Commander skills

Kubernetes and Terraform

Architecting global distributed systems

Error Budget advocacy

Education

15+ years of experience in large-scale distributed systems

Proficiency in Go or Python

Tools

Kubernetes

Terraform

Azure Kubernetes Service

Job description

What you’ll do

Docusign is at a pivotal moment. We are transforming from the world’s leading eSignature tool into an Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) platform. This shift requires more than just “stable” infrastructure; it requires a revolutionary approach to reliability. We are looking for a Principal SRE who doesn’t just manage systems, but transforms them. You are an Engineering-First visionary who believes that the only way to achieve 99.99% reliability at scale is through code, not humans. You will be tasked with evolving our SRE organization from a traditional support-focused model into a lighthouse of engineering excellence that leads the company’s technical strategy.

This position is an individual contributor role reporting to the VP, Engineering - Site Reliability.

Responsibilities

• Lead and code with the team
• Lead the cultural and technical shift toward treating reliability as a product feature
• Move the org away from reactive “ops” work toward building durable platforms and self-healing systems
• Possess elite Incident Commander skills while not expected to be in the daily on-call rotation, stepping in during high-stakes outages to bring calm and clarity, and use those experiences to architect systems that ensure those incidents never happen again
• Define the “Golden Paths” for our Cloud migration, ensuring that as Docusign scales globally, our architecture remains “Multi-Active” and impervious to regional cloud failures
• Challenge the status quo, mentoring Senior and Staff SREs to think like software architects
• Advocate for “Error Budgets” that have real teeth, influencing product roadmaps to prioritize long-term stability

Job Designation

Remote: Employee is not required to be in or near an office frequently and works from a designated remote work location for the majority of the time.

Positions at Docusign are assigned a job designation of either In Office, Hybrid or Remote and are specific to the role/job. Preferred job designations are not guaranteed when changing positions within Docusign. Docusign reserves the right to change a position’s job designation depending on business needs and as permitted by local law.

What you bring

Basic

• 15+ years of experience in large-scale distributed systems, software engineering, or infrastructure roles, with a track record of driving system architecture
• Experience as a software engineer by trade with deep proficiency in Go or Python, possessing a “code-first” approach and a passion for writing production‑grade automation services alongside the engineering team
• Experience with proven technical leadership in building global, active‑active distributed systems at hyperscale, functioning simultaneously as an architect and an engineering peer
• Experience with production‑hardened mastery of Kubernetes and Terraform to manage complex, multi‑tenant cloud topographies
• Experience acting as a primary Lead Incident Commander for tier‑0 global outages, with the ability to translate operational chaos into actionable technical stabilization
• Experience defining “Developer Experience” strategies and contributing to Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) that bake resilience and infrastructure abstractions directly into developer workflows

Preferred

• Technical expertise executing high‑stakes on‑premises to cloud migrations natively within Microsoft Azure (specifically utilizing Azure Kubernetes Service / AKS and Azure traffic routing)
• Hands‑on experience architecting global distributed tracing capabilities using the OpenTelemetry ecosystem to track deep, user‑centric SLO metrics across microservices
• Experience developing self‑healing infrastructure patterns through a blend of deterministic code and AI‑assisted/predictive anomaly remediation models
• Experience championing and setting up automated fault‑injection frameworks to proactively prove system recoverability before a real production blast radius occurs
• Experience building safe deployment architectures (Canary, Blue/Green) managed via secure pipelines (GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps) with automated safety policies embedded directly into the code lifecycle

Wage Transparency

Pay for this position is based on a number of factors including geographic location and may vary depending on job‑related knowledge, skills, and experience.

Based on applicable legislation, the below details pay ranges in the following locations:

California: $212,100.00 - $342,650.00 base salary

Illinois, Colorado, Massachusetts and Minnesota: $202,100.00 - $285,500.00 base salary

Washington, Maryland, New Jersey and New York (including NYC metro area): $202,100.00 - $299,625.00 base salary

Washington DC: $212,100.00 - $299,625.00 base salary

Ohio: $182,200.00 - $257,350.00 base salary

This role is also eligible for the following:

• Bonus: Sales personnel are eligible for variable incentive pay dependent on their achievement of pre-established sales goals. Non‑Sales roles are eligible for a company bonus plan, which is calculated as a percentage of eligible wages and dependent on company performance.
• Stock: This role is eligible to receive Restricted Stock Units (RSUs).

Global benefits provide options for the following:

• Paid Time Off: earned time off, as well as paid company holidays based on region
• Paid Parental Leave: take up to six months off with your child after birth, adoption or foster care placement
• Full Health Benefits Plans: options for 100% employer paid and minimum employee contribution health plans from day one of employment
• Retirement Plans: select retirement and pension programs with potential for employer contributions
• Learning and Development: options for coaching, online courses and education reimbursements
• Compassionate Care Leave: paid time off following the loss of a loved one and other life‑changing events

States Not Eligible for Employment

This position is not eligible for employment in the following states: Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Equal Opportunity Employer

It’s important to us that we build a talented team that is as diverse as our customers and where all employees feel a deep sense of belonging and thrive. We encourage great talent who bring a range of perspectives to apply for our open positions. Docusign is an Equal Opportunity Employer and makes hiring decisions based on experience, skill, aptitude and a can‑do approach. We will not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, color, age, sex, religion, national origin, ancestry, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information, physical or mental disability, registered domestic partner status, caregiver status, marital status, veteran or military status, or any other legally protected category.