Principal Software Engineer, CBCI

Description

Job Title: Principal Software Engineer, CBCI

Job Type: Full-time

Location: Hybrid - Denver, CO (3 days on-site per week)

About CloudBees

CloudBees helps organizations build, run, and govern software factories, giving enterprises the confidence to ship software better, faster, and safer.

Writing code is no longer the bottleneck. Governing what reaches production and validating its impact is. As enterprises adopt agentic coding, software is created faster than most teams can review, secure, and validate. Without consistent governance, organizations risk shipping code they cannot explain, audit, or trust.

CloudBees addresses this challenge without asking teams to replace the tools they already use. Across every toolchain a customer runs, CloudBees makes each change, human or AI, visible, auditable, and accountable before it reaches production. CloudBees Unify is the product behind this: a governance layer, with context and control-plane capabilities, that enforces consistent policy and evidence across every tool, team, and workflow.

Founded in 2010, CloudBees is backed by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bridgepoint Capital, HSBC, Golub Capital, Delta-v Capital, Matrix Partners, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Visit us at www.cloudbees.com.

About the Role

CloudBees CI helps enterprises build and deliver software with confidence. Built on Jenkins, with a core written in Java and deployments running on Kubernetes, it brings together the challenges of distributed systems, an extensible plugin ecosystem, and the reliability customers expect from critical delivery infrastructure.

We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to set technical direction for the CloudBees CI product area and turn that direction into working software. You will lead architecture and execution across teams while staying close to the code: solving the hardest engineering problems, improving an established codebase, and helping other engineers do their best work.

You bring deep expertise in Java, Kubernetes, and distributed systems, together with a product mindset. You understand that an architectural decision is only valuable if it improves the customer's experience. You know when to simplify, when to invest in a deeper change, and how to move an established product forward without compromising the workflows customers depend on.

Requirements

What You'll Do

Shape the technical direction:

• Build a deep understanding of the existing CloudBees CI architecture, Jenkins internals, and customer workloads. Use that evidence to identify the changes that will make the greatest difference.
• Define the technical roadmap with engineering and product partners, connecting architectural investments to customer needs and measurable improvements in reliability, performance, and maintainability.
• Lead the design of resilient distributed systems running on Kubernetes. Make tradeoffs around scale, failure handling, compatibility, and operational complexity explicit, and document the reasoning behind key decisions.

Stay hands-on with the hardest engineering work:

• Write production-quality Java and own critical refactors, performance improvements, and stability fixes. Lead difficult changes from design through testing, release, and follow-up.
• Diagnose complex JVM and distributed-system problems, including memory leaks, thread contention, classloading issues, and failures that emerge across components.
• Evolve plugin-based architectures and service boundaries while protecting compatibility and upgrade behavior. Simplify where possible and introduce new abstractions only when they solve a clear problem.

Bring the team with you:

• Earn the trust of an established engineering team. Listen first, explain your reasoning, and build alignment through technical judgment and working code.
• Drive initiatives across teams by breaking ambiguous problems into achievable milestones, coordinating dependencies, anticipating risks, and unblocking delivery.
• Lead rigorous design and code reviews. Mentor Staff and other senior engineers, share knowledge, and establish engineering standards that teams can apply consistently.

Make quality and customer outcomes the default:

• Strengthen secure coding, automated unit and integration testing, and release practices. Ensure changes are tested against realistic workflows, failure modes, and upgrade scenarios.
• Use profiling, metrics, logs, and incident evidence to find root causes and validate improvements. Turn recurring problems into durable fixes and better engineering practices.
• Partner with support, product, and engineering colleagues to resolve complex customer issues. Improve the feedback loop from code to customer, removing delivery bottlenecks while maintaining confidence in each release.

What You'll Bring

• 12+ years of relevant software engineering experience, including technical leadership at Staff or Principal scope and a track record of delivering complex software platforms.
• Deep Java expertise, including JVM behavior, concurrency, memory management, classloading, and source and bytecode compatibility. You can investigate unfamiliar code and explain why a system behaves the way it does.
• Experience building and supporting distributed systems running on Kubernetes in production. You can explain the architectural tradeoffs, failure modes, and what you changed when things went wrong.
• Strong distributed-systems knowledge, including concurrency, event-driven architectures, message buses, and failure handling.
• A track record of improving established codebases through thoughtful refactoring, architectural simplification, and measurable improvements to performance or reliability.
• Current, hands-on coding experience. You regularly contribute code that reaches production and can take difficult changes through testing and release.
• Experience setting technical direction across teams, leading complex initiatives, and developing other senior engineers through design discussions, code review, and mentorship.
• A strong understanding of CI/CD and developer workflows, with the ability to connect technical decisions to customer needs, delivery speed, and product quality.
• Clear communication and the ability to influence engineering, product, and senior stakeholders through evidence, explicit tradeoffs, and sound reasoning.

Your Mindset

• You think like a technical founder: you own outcomes for the product area and follow problems through to resolution.
• You bring high emotional intelligence to technical leadership. You challenge designs constructively, invite dissent, and change your mind when the evidence changes.
• You prefer simple, robust solutions and practical progress. You balance urgency with the compatibility, security, and reliability customers depend on.

Strong Candidates May Also

• Have deep experience with Jenkins internals, plugin development, or the challenges of maintaining an extensible enterprise product.
• Have led significant modernization, simplification, or stabilization efforts on an established CI/CD system, workflow engine, or developer platform.
• Have contributed to Jenkins, Kubernetes, or the broader open-source DevOps ecosystem.
• Have experience with LLM-powered features or MCP tooling in production backends.

How We Work

• Customer Obsessed — You treat customer problems as your own and build relationships with the people behind the logo, not just the account. You can point to decisions you changed because of what a customer told you.
• High Agency — You own problems beyond your job description and move without waiting to be asked. When the path isn't defined, you make the call and bring people with you rather than working around them.
• Truth Seeking — You hold a strong point of view and update it when the data says otherwise. You argue for the best answer regardless of who's in the room, and once a decision is made, you commit to it fully.
• Hard Work — You own the end result, not just your slice of it, and you go beyond what's expected to get there. You work smart as well as hard, and you find real reward in building something demanding alongside people who do the same.
• Ship Excellence — You hold a painfully high quality bar and keep raising it, while shipping with urgency instead of waiting for perfect. Every iteration is something you learn from.
• Direct Feedback — You give honest, constructive feedback regardless of seniority or tenure, and you actively ask for it in return. You deliver it with enough care that people want to hear it from you.

What You'll Get

• The opportunity to shape the technical direction of CloudBees CI, with hands-on ownership of consequential engineering work.
• A global, collaborative team that takes its craft seriously, shares knowledge, and invests in each other's growth.

Compensation & Benefits

• Base Pay Range: $200,000 - $230,000 annually In accordance with applicable law, this represents a reasonable estimated compensation range for this role. Actual compensation will be determined based on skills, experience, and geographic location and may be more or less than the amount shown above. Outside of base compensation, CloudBees also offers stock options and variable bonuses. 

What CloudBees Offers

• Time that's actually yours. Our BEE-Flexible PTO policy folds vacation, sick time, and personal days into one unlimited plan. Plus paid U.S. holidays and 2 dedicated Bee-Giving Days to volunteer for a cause you care about.
• Health coverage from day one. You're eligible on your start date, not 90 days in. Choose from medical, dental and vision options designed to support your healthcare needs. Choose an HDHP plan and we will contribute to your HSA on top of your own pre-tax contributions. 
• Real money toward your future. Invest in your future with a competitive 401(k) company match, offering both pre-tax and Roth options to help you reach your financial goals.  
• Protection we pay for entirely. We fully fund your Life and AD&D, Short Term Disability and Long Term Disability protection. Plus our Employee Assistance Program is fully covered too.
• Support for your headspace -  literally. All Bees have access to a company-sponsored Headspace account. Plus, a dedicated Care Concierge service in the U.S. so you never have to decode a benefits question alone.
• A home office that works. A stipend every month toward your work-from-home setup in addition to the opportunity to work (hybrid for Denver, CO employees) in an office with your peers.
• Upside when we win. Base salary is the floor. Our bonus plan rewards for the goals you deliver and the growth we drive together.  
• People who sweat the craft. A team that takes its work seriously and invests in each other's growth.
• A global, collaborative team that lives by our values: Customer Obsessed, High Agency, Truth Seeking, Hard Work, Ship Excellence, Direct Feedback.

EEO Statement
CloudBees is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All employment decisions are made based on qualifications, merit, and business need, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.

Disclaimer
This job description is intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed. It is not an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, and qualifications required of employees assigned to this position. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice.