Principal Software Engineer, Cloud Networking Platform

The role:

We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to own the long-term networking vision for all of SoFi. SoFi runs almost entirely in AWS, and every member interaction, from opening the app to moving money, travels over the cloud networks this role will shape: the internet edge, DNS, CDN and WAF, load balancing and ingress, VPC and multi-account connectivity, service-to-service traffic, and connectivity to our partners. You will sit on the Cloud Platform team, but your scope and impact are company-wide.

You will define the north-star cloud network architecture and the multi-year path to get there. That includes multi-region and multi-cluster traffic management, incremental rollout and progressive delivery at the network layer, and a network that is resilient, secure, and fast for our members. You will also guide the strategy for our small on-premises colocation footprint, including how it connects to the cloud. You will identify the hard problems others miss, make the critical tradeoffs, and lead them from idea through execution.

You will lead how we use AI to run networking and infrastructure. We are moving toward an AI-accelerated SDLC for infrastructure, and you will design and build the automation, agentic workflows, and guardrails that let us change the network faster and more safely, and help other infrastructure teams do the same.

This is a hands-on, high-influence role. You will partner with engineering, security, risk and compliance, SRE, architecture, and business leaders across SoFi and its technology platform businesses. Your partnership with Security and Compliance is especially important: you will help shape the network policies and standards that govern how SoFi's network is built and changed, and make sure they are practical to implement and automate. Beyond networking, you will bring enough depth in compute, Kubernetes, identity, and infrastructure as code to give strategic guidance and feedback across the broader Cloud Platform.

The ideal candidate is a recognized networking expert and a mentor who is equally comfortable writing the design doc, reviewing the code, and leading the incident bridge. They have a solid sense of ownership and can explain a hard tradeoff to engineers and executives alike.

What you’ll do:

• Network strategy and architecture: Own the long-term technical vision for networking across SoFi, defining a north-star architecture and an incremental, multi-year roadmap. Lead the architecture of member-facing networking. Design multi-region and multi-cluster networking. Enable incremental rollout and progressive delivery. Set direction for service-to-service and multi-account connectivity. Drive network automation end to end.

• AI and automation: Lead the use of AI to design, operate, and change networks and infrastructure. Define the guardrails, policy checks, and success criteria that make AI-guided infrastructure changes safe in a regulated environment. Build reusable AI tooling and patterns that other infrastructure teams can adopt.

• Leadership and influence: Serve as a strategic technical advisor to Infrastructure and Technology leadership on networking, influencing roadmaps, investment, and vendor and build-versus-buy choices. Champion AI adoption across infrastructure. Lead design reviews for network-impacting changes, driving clear outcomes on one-way doors. Be the technical partner to Security, Compliance, and Risk on network policies and standards.

• Operational excellence: Be the subject matter expert and lead resolver for company-critical network incidents. Define SLOs and outcome metrics for networking, such as member-facing latency, availability, and change lead time. Build observability into the network so we detect issues before our members and partners do.

• Mentorship and talent: Mentor Staff and Senior Staff engineers and emerging technical leaders. Raise the bar for design and code review.

What you’ll need:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience).

• 10+ years of professional engineering experience, including 2+ years in a senior technical leadership role (Staff or above) with company-wide or multi-department scope.

• Deep expertise in networking fundamentals and protocols, including TCP/IP, BGP, DNS, TLS, HTTP, and L4/L7 load balancing.

• Deep experience designing and operating large-scale, internet-facing networks, including edge, CDN, WAF, and DDoS protection.

• Deep expertise in AWS networking and multi-account, multi-region design.

• Strong experience with Kubernetes networking, ingress and gateway patterns, and service meshes, including multi-cluster topologies.

• Proven experience with traffic management for progressive delivery, such as weighted routing, canary releases, and automated rollback.

• Hands-on experience using AI to automate infrastructure or operations work.

• Proven programming skills in one or more languages such as Go or Python, and excellent experience with infrastructure as code and network automation.

• Demonstrated track record of setting technical direction across organizations and delivering multi-quarter, cross-functional initiatives to completion.

• Experience leading the response to high-severity, customer-impacting incidents.

• Exceptional written and verbal communication, including the ability to present complex technical strategy and tradeoffs to executives, product managers, and engineers.

• Exceptional interpersonal skills, with the ability to build trust and drive alignment with non-technical partners and across organizational boundaries.

Nice to have:

• Experience with on-premises data center networking and hybrid connectivity to public cloud.

• Experience with zero trust networking, network segmentation, and workload identity.

• Experience building agentic tooling, MCP servers, or AI-guided automation for infrastructure or network operations.

• Experience with PKI and certificate automation at scale.

• Experience applying security standards and compliance frameworks (SOC 2, PCI DSS, FFIEC, or similar) to network design in regulated industries.