Principal Software Engineer

Cohesity; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 340,000 - 378,000; Full time

Job summary

Cohesity is seeking a Principal Engineer (L8) to lead the architecture and development of cloud-native services and platform infrastructure powering large-scale SaaS and multi-cloud environments. You will drive the technical vision for multi-tenant cloud services across AWS, Azure, GCP, and OCI, partnering with senior engineers to enable product teams to operate at scale with reliability.

This strategic role demands deep distributed-systems expertise and a passion for shaping the future of

Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience building large-scale distributed systems.
• 5+ years of experience on public cloud.
• Deep expertise in containers and orchestration (Kubernetes).
• Strong background designing cloud-native, multi-tenant SaaS architectures.
• Hands-on experience with highly scalable microservices architectures.
• Expertise in cloud storage, networking, compute services, and distributed data platforms.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the architecture and technical roadmap for cloud-native platform services.
• Lead design of large-scale, multi-tenant distributed systems as managed cloud services.
• Provide deep technical leadership across engineering teams and influence architecture decisions.
• Mentor senior and staff engineers and raise the technical bar across the organization.

Skills

Distributed systems

Public cloud

Kubernetes

Multi-tenant SaaS

Microservices

Tools

Terraform

Helm

ArgoCD

Job description

Cohesity is a leader in AI-powered data security and management. Aided by an extensive ecosystem of partners, Cohesity makes it easy to secure, protect, manage, and get value from data — across the data center, edge, and cloud. Cohesity helps organizations defend against cybersecurity threats with comprehensive data security and management capabilities, including immutable backup snapshots, AI-based threat detection, monitoring for malicious behavior, and rapid recovery at scale.

We’ve been named a Leader by multiple analyst firms and have been globally recognized for Innovation, Product Strength, and Simplicity in Design.

Join us on our mission to shape the future of our industry.

We are looking for an exceptional Principal Engineer (L8) to lead the architecture and development of next-generation cloud-native services and platform infrastructure powering large-scale SaaS and multi-cloud environments.

In this role, you will drive the technical vision and architecture for multi-tenant services running across various clouds like AWS, Azure, GCP, and Oracle Cloud (OCI). You will partner with senior engineering leaders to design highly scalable, resilient, and secure cloud services that enable product teams to build and operate software efficiently on a massive scale.

This is a highly strategic role for a technologist who thrives on solving complex distributed systems problems and shaping the future of cloud-native platforms.

HOW YOU'LL SPEND YOUR TIME HERE

Technical Leadership

• Define and drive the architecture and technical roadmap for cloud-native platform services.
• Lead the design of large-scale, multi-tenant distributed systems running as managed cloud services.
• Provide deep technical leadership across engineering teams and influence architecture decisions across the organization.
• Mentor senior and staff engineers and raise the technical bar across the engineering organization.

Cloud-Native Platform

• Architect and build cloud native platforms across compute, storage, networking, and data, for high availability, performance, with multi-tenant isolation, fault containment and resilience.
• Design microservices and event-driven architectures using service mesh, API gateways, and managed cloud services.
• Develop platforms that enable self-service deployment, GitOps, and infrastructure as code.
• Drive best practices for end-to-end production ownership, failure-domain design, disaster recovery, safe fleet-wide upgrades and rollouts, automation, and reducing operational toil

Multi-Cloud Architecture

• Design solutions that run seamlessly across multiple clouds with trade-offs between common abstractions and cloud-specific capabilities to optimize cost, performance, reliability and operational efficiency.
• Lead adoption of serverless, managed data services, and cloud-native storage and networking.
• Drive cloud cost efficiency (FinOps), performance, and scalability across the platform.
• Define cloud security and compliance architecture: identity, encryption, network isolation, and zero trust.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with product, security, SRE, and infrastructure teams to deliver highly scalable and reliable services.
• Influence engineering strategy and participate in technical reviews and architecture governance.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and drive innovation across the cloud-native ecosystem.

WE'D LOVE TO TALK TO YOU IF YOU HAVE MANY OF THE FOLLOWING

Technical Expertise

• 15+ years of experience building large-scale distributed systems, including 5+ years on public cloud.
• Deep expertise in containers and orchestration like Kubernetes
• Strong experience designing cloud-native, multi-tenant SaaS architectures on public cloud.
• Hands-on experience designing highly scalable microservices architectures.
• Expertise in cloud storage, networking, and compute services, and distributed data platforms.

Infrastructure & Cloud

• Strong experience with cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure; multi-cloud experience preferred.
• Experience with infrastructure as code and CI/CD (Terraform, Helm, ArgoCD or similar) and automation at scale.
• Deep knowledge of observability, monitoring, and site reliability engineering principles.

Programming

• Strong software engineering background with proficiency in Golang, Java, or Python; C++ a plus.
• Experience building highly performant systems and debugging complex distributed architectures.

Leadership

• Proven ability to influence engineering strategy at an organizational level.
• Strong track record of mentoring engineers and driving technical excellence.
• Ability to translate complex technical challenges into scalable cloud platform solutions.

#LI-RB1

Disclosure Pursuant to Applicable State Equal Pay Transparency Laws - This position has a starting pay range as listed below. Actual salary depends upon many factors, including a candidate’s skills, qualifications and experience, location, and salary expectations, and therefore a starting salary at the low end, high end, or even above the stated range may be offered. This position may also be eligible for bonus compensation, commission (if in a sales function), and/or equity grants. Additionally, full-time employees are eligible to participate in our comprehensive benefits framework, including health and wellness benefits, vacation, paid holidays and refresh days, 401(k) retirement plan, life and disability insurance coverages, and other benefits the Company may offer from time to time.

Pay Range: $340,200.00-$378,000.00

The compensation noted above is based on an annualized hourly rate assuming normal full-time employment.

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Equal Employment Opportunity Employer (EEOE)

Cohesity is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin or nationality, ancestry, age, disability, gender identity or expression, marital status, veteran status or any other category protected by law.

In-Office Expectations

Cohesity employees who are within a reasonable commute (e.g. within a forty-five (45) minute average travel time) work out of our core offices 2-3 days a week of their choosing.

We strongly prefer candidates who are currently located in or near the designated job location. Candidates outside the area should apply only if they are committed to relocating prior to their start date and have the legal right to work in the job location.

If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process, or are limited in the ability or unable to access or use this online application process and need an alternative method for applying, you may contact us at 1-855-9COHESITY or [e-mail] for assistance.