About the RoleWe are seeking a Principal Software Architect, to own end-to-end platform architecture for cloud-native services and public APIs; provide reference designs and guardrails.
What will you do?- Set reliability and performance standards; define SLOs and error budgets; run incident postmortems with action items; partner with SRE to meet SLOs.
- Plan and execute scale initiatives to support 10× user and traffic growth; drive capacity, cost, and resilience roadmaps.
- Lead cross-functional delivery with Product and SRE; decompose initiatives into milestones and technical workplans.
- Chair design and architecture reviews; publish and enforce engineering standards across security, CI/CD, testing, and observability.
- Evaluate and introduce platforms, patterns, and tooling; run proofs-of-concept and phased rollouts.
- Lead architecture for core platform capabilities and future domains as assigned.
- Define technical approach and non-functional requirements; review designs and ensure implementation meets performance, security, and cost targets.
- Define cloud reference stacks; require IaC, container orchestration, and observability baselines; guide implementation with platform teams.
- Provide technical mentorship to senior engineers; codify best practices.
Requirements- This position requires a Master's degree (or equivalent foreign degree) in Computer Science, Applied Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a closely related field and three (3) years of experience as a Software Engineer or a similar position responsible for software or systems engineering.
- Alternatively, will accept a Bachelor's degree (or equivalent foreign degree) in Computer Science, Applied Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a closely related field and five (5) years of experience as a Software Engineer or a similar position responsible for software or systems engineering.
- Experience, which may have been gained concurrently with primary requirement above must include two (2) years of experience with:
- Designing distributed or cloud-native systems and public APIs.
- Working with both relational and NoSQL databases.
- CI/CD and automated testing practices.
- Tools:
- At least one language including Python/Java/Go or equivalent
- At least one web framework including Django/FastAPI/NestJS or equivalent
- Cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP) and IaC
- Containers and observability
- Security-by-design practices for cloud applications
- Qualified applicants will also have experience providing technical leadership or mentoring.
- Position requires approximately 10% domestic travel
- Salary is $245,000-275,000 per year for 40-hour work week
What we offerCloaked is a well-funded Series B startup based out of NYC.
Although we are a distributed team, the NYC team operates with a hybrid model. We have two floors of our building, with two state of the art kitchens packed with drinks, snacks and everything else you'd need to get through the day.
The Cloaked team has diverse interests and so we frequently embark on team outings and go out for socials!
Compensation and BenefitsWe offer above market rate pay and equity based off of the market's best commercially available data. Your compensation will be a combination of salary, bonus and equity.
For full-time US employees, we offer a comprehensive benefits package: medical, dental and vision with Cloaked covering the majority of employee premiums, company-paid basic life, and a 401(k) with company match.
We offer flexible work arrangements and the ability to work remotely as needed. Cloaked provides a home office stipend in addition to a new company laptop (and other tech depending on the role).
Perks Competitive PTO: PTO, floating holidays and sick days - and we push people to actually use them. We see time off as a preventative burnout measure, not a balance to hoard.
Parental Leave: Paid leave for all new parents - birth, adoption, or foster placement - because the people building privacy deserve time with their families.
Monthly wellness & meals stipend: Used for any kind of physical, mental or emotional care you'd like to take for yourself, be it a gym membership, a meditation app, or time with a personal trainer - plus lunch and coffee during the workday.
Professional Growth: Opportunities for career development and personal growth are provided to all employees who seek to further their knowledge and capabilities through an unlimited professional development fund. Additionally team members are encouraged to regularly attend conferences and industry events.
We are really excited about having you join our mission-driven team and help us build the future of online privacy!
