Senior Principal Engineer - Platform Engineering

Fastly helps people stay better connected with the things they love. Fastly’s edge cloud platform enables customers to create great digital experiences quickly, securely, and reliably by processing, serving, and securing our customers’ applications as close to their end-users as possible — at the edge of the Internet. The platform is designed to take advantage of the modern internet, to be programmable, and to support agile software development. Fastly’s customers include many of the world’s most prominent companies, including GitHub, Yelp, Paramount, and JetBlue.

We're building a more trustworthy Internet. Come join us.

Posting Open Date: Reposted March 30, 2026

Anticipated Posting Close Date*: April 20, 2026

*Job posting may close early due to the volume of applicants.

Senior Principal Engineer, Platform Engineering

Fastly’s Platform Engineering team builds the foundations that enable engineers to ship quickly, safely, and reliably at scale. As a Senior Principal Engineer, you will set technical direction and lead cross‑organizational initiatives that strengthen our platform, developer experience, and operational excellence. You’ll partner closely with Engineering peers to remove friction, standardize best practices, and deliver paved roads that accelerate product teams. This is a highly cross‑functional and hands-on role representing the Platform Engineering org, reporting to the Senior Director of Engineering.

What You'll Do:

Lead architecture and technical direction for Platform Engineering initiatives spanning build, deploy, runtime, observability, Security and developer experience

Partner with Engineering, SRE, Security, and Product teams to align roadmaps, priorities, and success metrics across the company

Drive cross‑org programs from concept to delivery (e.g., service templates/golden paths, CI/CD modernization, reliability and cost efficiency improvements)

Define and evolve platform standards (APIs, operational readiness, SLOs/SLAs, incident learnings) and ensure adoption through tooling and enablement

Mentor and amplify senior engineers and tech leads; raise the bar for design reviews, technical writing, and engineering rigor

Communicate progress, risks, and decisions clearly to stakeholders and leadership; represent Platform Engineering in technical forums

What We're Looking For:

12+ years of related professional software engineering experience, including designing and operating distributed systems in production

Demonstrated success leading complex, cross‑functional technical initiatives with broad organizational impact

Deep expertise in at least two of: cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes/container platforms, CI/CD systems, networking/service connectivity, observability, security, developer tooling

Strong systems design and architecture skills with a pragmatic approach to tradeoffs, risk management, and incremental delivery

Excellent written and verbal communication; ability to influence without authority and align diverse stakeholders

Commitment to building diverse and inclusive teams and an environment where engineers can do their best work

We’ll be super impressed if you have experience in any of these:

Experience building internal developer platforms or “paved roads” at scale (e.g., service catalogs, self‑service infrastructure, standardized delivery pipelines)

Background in high‑performance networking/edge/CDN systems or globally distributed traffic platforms

Strong SRE practices: SLOs, error budgets, incident response, and continuous improvement loops

Experience with infrastructure‑as‑code (e.g., Terraform), policy‑as‑code, and security automation

Track record of driving adoption through enablement: docs, workshops, office hours, and partner engagement

Work Hours:

This position will require you to be available during core business hours and occasional nights and weekends as needed for on call support

Work Location(s) Travel Requirements:

The preferred hybrid locations for this position are:

San Francisco, CA

Denver, CO

New York, NY

Fastly currently embraces a largely hybrid model for most roles which allows employees flexibility to split their time between the office and home.

We are also willing to consider highly qualified remote candidates in the United States.

This position will require travel as required by your manager.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Salary:

The estimated salary range for this position is $287,570 to $345,084.

Starting salary may vary based on permissible, non-discriminatory factors such as experience, skills, qualifications, and location.

This role may be eligible to participate in Fastly’s equity and discretionary bonus programs.

Benefits:

We care about you. Fastly works hard to create a positive environment for our employees, and we think your life o…