Principal Software Engineer

Have you ever wondered what happens inside the cloud?

Based in New York, DigitalOcean is a dynamic, high-growth technology company that serves a robust and passionate community of developers, teams, and businesses around the world. We believe that today’s entrepreneurs are changing the world through software. Our mission is to empower these entrepreneurs by bringing modern app development within reach for any developer, anywhere in the world.

We want people who are passionate about staying on top of the latest cloud infrastructure trends, and have an excellent aptitude for supporting internal employees and teams.

We are looking for a highly experienced, highly motivated Principal Software Engineer with a Computer Science or Engineering background that will be involved in the architecture, design, implementation, verification and integration of the next generation of DigitalOcean Cloud Computing software.

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Working at the forefront of cloud and distributed computing technologies.
• Serve as the architect driving the technical strategy and direction for our large-scale cloud services, driving simplicity, high-reliability, ease of maintenance and operation.
• Own the primary responsibility for establishing a pragmatic long term technical direction for our software services ensuring alignment with our customers, business goals and internal teams.
• Lead a team of highly passionate technical leads to evolve our service architecture, oversee alignment of several products technical roadmaps.
• Lead by example through direct contribution, and provide direction in establishing development and operational practices.
• Serving as the technical lead on our most demanding, cross-functional projects.
• Actively mentor individuals and the engineering community on advanced technical issues.

What We’ll Expect From You:

Architect level experience in the following domains:

• The ideal candidate is excited about the incredible opportunity that cloud computing represents, and is passionate about delivering high quality services in a hyper-growth environment where priorities can shift fast.
• Proven track record of  leading and mentoring large software teams
• Experience with web and cloud native services is a must-have.
• Demonstrate excellent ability to influence, build consensus and increase productivity by driving technical alignment between multiple teams..
• Adept at Systems Thinking and is able to decompose complex problems into simple, straight-forward solutions.
• Fully and completely understand system interdependencies and limitations.
• Expert knowledge in performance, scalability, enterprise system architecture, and engineering best practices.
• Leverage knowledge of open-source, industry, prior art in architecture decisions.
• Balance technical leadership and savvy with strong business judgment to make the right decisions about technology. You’ll strive for simplicity and will demonstrate significant creativity.
• Master’s degree or higher preferred
• 15+ years professional experience in web-scale system software development
• 5+ years developing and supporting serverless applications
• In depth experience in two or more of the following areas: Cloud Computing, Storage, Networking, Platform-as-a-Service, Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Software-as-a-Service.
• Excellent communication skills at all levels is a must.

Why You’ll Like Working for DigitalOcean:

• We have amazing people. We can promise you will work with some of the smartest and most interesting people in the industry. We work hard but we always have fun doing it. We care deeply about each other and take our “no jerks” rule very seriously.
• We value development. We are a high-performance organization that is always challenging ourselves to continuously grow. That means we maintain a growth mindset in everything we do and invest deeply in employee development.  You’ll need to be great to get hired here and we promise you’ll get even better.
• We care about you. We offer competitive health, dental, and vision benefits for employees and their dependents, a monthly gym reimbursement to support your physical health, and a monthly commute allowance to make your trips to and from work easier.
• We invest in your future. We offer competitive compensation and a 401k plan with up to a 4% employer match. We also provide all employees with reimbursement for relevant conferences, training, and education.
• We want you to love where you work. We have great office spaces located in the heart of SoHo NYC and Cambridge and offer daily catered lunches to keep your hunger at bay. We’re also very remote-friendly—we use Slack to communicate across the company—and all remote employees have the opportunity to onboard in-office and take an all-expenses paid trip to our annual company offsite, Shark Week, to get quality in-person time with the team at least once a year. We also allow employees to customize their workstations to meet their needs—whether remote or in office.
• We value diversity and inclusivity. We are an equal opportunity employer and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.