Software Engineer, Infrastructure

XYZ Venture Capital; Arlington (VA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) match

Medical, dental, and vision benefits

12 weeks parental leave

Family-forming stipends

Gender-affirming care

Unlimited PTO

Job summary

Cape is seeking a software engineer to help build privacy-focused telecom infrastructure. You’ll own the full lifecycle development and collaborate with world-class engineers across teams in a startup-like environment based in New York. This role emphasizes privacy, national security, and real-world impact.

Expect to work in person at our NYC office with occasional remote days, enjoy meaningful equity, and contribute to FedRamp accreditation and high-availability systems.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of software engineering or SRE experience.
• Strong familiarity with AWS.
• Fluency in Go, Rust, Java, or Python.
• Experience with monitoring infrastructure & tooling.
• Experience delivering high-availability systems.
• Passion for privacy and national security.
• Desire to work on software with real-world impact.

Responsibilities

• Be responsible for the full lifecycle development of our privacy-focused telecommunications and deployment infrastructure.
• Build, integrate, and maintain monitoring infrastructure and tooling for improving the reliability, availability, and performance of our system.
• Help solve issues proactively before they become issues.
• Build new or integrate with existing telecommunications infrastructure and components.
• Own the technical accreditation and compliance process end-to-end for FedRamp.
• Shape and influence what great software engineering practices look like.
• Balance short term critical business needs with long term product vision and roadmap.

Skills

Software engineering / SRE

AWS

Go / Rust / Java / Python

Monitoring tools

High availability systems

Privacy & security

Tools

Azure

GCP

IMS

4G/5G core

IP Multimedia Subsystem

Job description

About Cape

Cape is America’s privacy-first mobile carrier. Our mission is to be a force for good in global wireless. Cape was founded in 2022 by people who believe privacy is a fundamental right, not a luxury to be traded away. Our journey began when our founder recognized a critical vulnerability in our modern world: everyone relies on the same stagnant cellular infrastructure and legacy systems that track our every movement, monitor and profile our connections, and lose and sell our personal data.

Instead of accepting the status quo, we decided to fix it. National security professionals, journalists, parents, and everyone in between can stay connected and have privacy.

We didn’t just build a layer on top of old tech; we built America’s most private and secure mobile carrier from the ground up. By building our own network from scratch, we are able to design and build a suite of privacy and security features that no other carrier on the planet can offer.

Today, Cape provides our secure network to consumers, businesses, and government agencies alike. We closed our Series C in March 2026, and we are scaling rapidly, with the goal of giving people back control of their most personal information.

The Team

At Cape, we are the architects of a privacy-centric movement that is just getting started. We are relentless builders, constantly innovating at the edge of what's possible in telecommunications. We operate on a foundation of high trust and high expectations. Our structure is flat, and collaboration matters more than hierarchy. As a member of our team, you will collaborate with world-class engineers, architects, and visionaries, and work across organizational lines to solve "impossible" problems and deliver mission-critical results for our users every single day.

The Role

To join our team, you should be excited to:

• Dive into a well-funded but early-stage startup. We’re in a scrappy phase, be comfortable getting a little uncomfortable.

• Reclaim some of the personal privacy we have all sacrificed as smartphone adoption has grown.

• Flex your technical skills on hard, important problems with serious implications for consumer privacy and national security.

• Push the envelope - we are using new technology in novel ways.

• Work on greenfield problems. Starting new projects from the ground up. Shaping the stack, practices, and getting the opportunity to try new tools and technologies.

• Work in person! There are no facetime requirements or set hours here, and we all take work from home days. But our default work location is our DC or NY office, and we enjoy the informal culture and serendipity that in-person work enables.

We’re offering competitive salary, benefits, and equity with early-stage upside.

What You'll Work On

• Be responsible for the full lifecycle development of our privacy-focused telecommunications and deployment infrastructure.

• Build, integrate, and maintain our instrumentation and monitoring infrastructure and tooling for improving the reliability, availability, and performance of our system.

• Help solve issues proactively before they become issues.

• Build new or integrate with existing telecommunications infrastructure and components.

• Own the technical accreditation and compliance process end-to-end for FedRamp.

• Shape and influence what great software engineering practices look like.

• Balance short term critical business needs with long term product vision and roadmap.

Experience

Although we list out what we generally look for, we are likely missing other attributes and skills that you have that could make you a great fit, but are not currently listed. It doesn't hurt to take a chance and apply!

• 4+ years of software engineering or SRE experience.

• Strong familiarity with AWS.

• Fluency in Golang, Rust, Java/Kotlin, Python, or similar language.

• Experience with building, deploying, and using monitoring infrastructure & tools.

• Experience designing, building, and delivering high availability systems and infrastructure.

• Passion for privacy and national security.

• A desire to work on software that has real-world impact.

Nice to have

• Familiarity with Azure and/or GCP in addition to AWS.

• Familiarity with mobile telecommunications technologies such as IP media subsystem (IMS), 4G/5G mobile core network functions, and/or multimedia protocols.

• Experience managing redundant, high availability multi-site deployments.

• Experience organizing documentation to support accreditation processes such as FedRamp and ATOs.

Compensation

We offer competitive compensation that is geo-adjusted based on your location, along with meaningful equity so you share in the value you help create. Salary range for this role in New York, New York is $180,000-$230,000 depending on experience and interview performance.

Our benefits include:

• 401(k) match

• 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision premiums for you and your dependents

• 12 weeks paid parental leave (for all parents, no waiting period)

• Stipends for

  • Family-forming needs

  • Gender-affirming care

• Unlimited PTO

Our Culture & Values

• We hire excellent people, give them outsized responsibility, and trust them to execute. Every person at Cape has a proven track record of tackling hard problems and winning.

• We believe that personal privacy and national security are not at odds, and that they can be reconciled through strong technology.

• We believe companies exist to build awesome things and take care of the people who build them, so we offer top-tier healthcare, 401(k) matching, and a generous vacation policy that our team actually uses to recharge.

• We believe that a stronger company and a better product are built by people from all walks of life. We hire without regard to race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital status, disability, or Veteran status. If you are great at what you do, you belong here.

We reserve the right to make use of any unsolicited resumes received from outside recruiting agencies and / or individual recruiters without being responsible for payment of any fees asserted from the use of unsolicited resumes.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin, and without regard to disability or status as a protected veteran, or any other status protected by law.