Principal Software Engineer – CI Platform, Kubernetes Leader

CloudBees, Inc.; Denver (CO); Hybrid; USD 200,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Time-off policy

Health coverage from day one

401(k) matching

Life & disability insurance

Headspace access

Home office stipend

Job summary

CloudBees is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for CBCI to set the technical direction of CloudBees CI and deliver scalable solutions. You will lead architecture, advance distributed systems on Kubernetes, and contribute code while mentoring staff and senior engineers.

You will drive reliability, performance, and maintainability by proposing architectural investments, guiding roadmap decisions, and ensuring compatibility across plugins and services.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of relevant software engineering experience, including technical leadership at Staff or Principal scope.
• Deep Java expertise, including JVM behavior, concurrency, memory management, and compatibility.
• Experience building and supporting distributed systems on Kubernetes in production.
• Strong distributed-systems knowledge, including concurrency, event-driven architectures, and failure handling.
• Track record of refactoring and improving codebases for performance or reliability.
• Current hands-on coding experience delivering production-quality code.
• Experience setting technical direction across teams and mentoring engineers.
• Strong understanding of CI/CD and developer workflows and their impact on product quality.
• Clear communication and ability to influence stakeholders with evidence and tradeoffs.

Responsibilities

• Shape the technical direction for CloudBees CI and translate it into working software.
• Stay hands-on with critical engineering work, including refactors and performance improvements.
• Lead design reviews, mentor engineers, and establish engineering standards.
• Improve security, testing, and release practices aligned with customer workflows.
• Collaborate with product, support, and engineering to resolve complex issues.

Skills

Java expertise

Kubernetes

Distributed systems

CI/CD understanding

Technical leadership

Communication

Tools

Jenkins internals

Plugin development

JVM profiling

Job description

CloudBees is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for CBCI to set the technical direction of CloudBees CI and deliver scalable solutions. You will lead architecture, advance distributed systems on Kubernetes, and contribute code while mentoring staff and senior engineers.

You will drive reliability, performance, and maintainability by proposing architectural investments, guiding roadmap decisions, and ensuring compatibility across plugins and services.