Principal Software Engineer, Couchbase
Capella Control Plane
$204-225k
3+ days a week in office (San Jose, CA)
Operational data platform for AI
Be an early applicant
Operational data platform for AI
501-1000 employees
Be an early applicant
$204-225k
3+ days a week in office (San Jose, CA)
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To simplify how organizations develop, deploy, and run modern applications wherever they are.
Role
Who you are
- Expertise in Golang with proven experience building distributed, cloud-native systems
- Strong knowledge of system design, high availability, fault tolerance, and performance tuning
- Hands-on experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure), including networking (VPCs, routing, load balancing, firewalls, private connectivity) and Kubernetes/container orchestration
- Experience designing and building control plane and platform components for SaaS platforms at scale
- Proven experience leading cross-team architecture and platform decisions in complex, ambiguous cloud and distributed systems environments
- Working knowledge of web UI architecture and ability to partner effectively with frontend engineers on end-to-end control plane workflows
- Experience mentoring engineers and driving org-level influence on engineering culture and standards
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field
- 12+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 5+ years in cloud/distributed systems
- Prior principal or staff engineer-level experience leading architecture and platform initiatives in cloud infrastructure or large-scale SaaS environments
- Studies show underrepresented talent is less likely to apply unless they meet all the criteria. We encourage you to apply if you’re excited about the role and can bring strong contributions to our team
Desirable
- Experience with DBaaS platforms or large-scale database infrastructure
- Exposure to AI/ML integrations within SaaS platforms (e.g., model serving, vector databases, AI-assisted workflows)
What the job involves
- Couchbase Capella is a fully managed Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) platform that powers mission-critical applications with a modern, distributed NoSQL database
- The Control Plane team builds and operates the foundational systems that deliver reliability, scalability, and seamless experiences across cloud environments
- We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to serve as the cross-team technical authority for Capella's Control Plane — the platform that orchestrates SaaS interactions with major cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure)
- This role is central to the evolution of Capella's multi-cloud control plane and will shape the systems that provision, secure, and operate the platform at scale
- You will set a durable technical direction with organization level influence, be accountable for production outcomes, and drive solutions to ambiguous, high-stakes problems through hands-on development and deep distributed systems expertise
- Architecture & Technical Direction: Define and evolve the control plane architecture for scalability, reliability, performance, and security
- Hands-on Development: Develop and deliver production-quality Golang code for critical Capella platform services. Establish and enforce coding standards, CI/CD practices, and design patterns
- Multi-Cloud Infrastructure: Architect and optimize multi-cloud deployments, networking models, VPC/VNet peering, load balancing, and secure connectivity across AWS, GCP, and Azure. Build and scale multi-tenant control plane services that orchestrate cluster lifecycle across providers
- Reliability & Observability: Define and implement monitoring, logging, tracing, and alerting standards for operational excellence. Own accountability for production outcomes including root cause analysis and long-term remediation of critical issues
- Platform Capabilities: Lead design and delivery of core platform capabilities such as provisioning, lifecycle management, and security controls. Tackle ambiguous distributed systems challenges involving scaling, networking, and performance
- Cross-Team Leadership: Exercise cross-team technical authority, partnering with product, SRE, Quality Engineering, operations, and global engineering teams across geographies to align technical direction with business goals. Maintain working knowledge of web UI architecture and partner effectively with frontend engineers on end-to-end control plane workflows
- Mentorship & Culture: Guide engineers across levels, perform code reviews, and set a high bar for engineering culture
- Innovation: Research and evaluate cloud-native technologies, frameworks, and architectures for Capella's evolution
Our take
Critical functions for digital businesses such as computing and storage have become cheaper by orders of magnitude with the advent of cloud computing. However, these businesses still face the challenge of architecting their services under this paradigm. Couchbase’s NoSQL database is designed to help organizations build scalable, distributed systems that take advantage of cloud-native infrastructure.
The company's major bets on Kubernetes, mobile and NoSQL have paid off too. With many large enterprises now treating Couchbase as mission-critical infrastructure, a trajectory that culminated because of ts 2021 IPO. While it operates in a highly competitive database market, the company has continued to grow post-IPO and is now positioning itself around the next shift in enterprise architecture: AI-native applications.
The recent launch of Couchbase AI Services reflects an effort to unify operational data, vector search and model hosting within a single platform, reducing the complexity that often prevents generative AI and agent-based systems from moving beyond proof-of-concept. By embedding governance, validation and security controls directly into the data layer, Couchbase is aiming to make its database a core foundation for production AI workloads.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
16% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 8 rounds)
May 2020
$105m
SERIES G
Mar 2016
$30m
SERIES F
Total funding: $251m
Company HQ
Cypress, San Jose, CA
Leadership
BJ Schaknowski
(CEO)Prior to joining Couchbase in 2025, BJ was the CEO of symplr. He also served as the Chief Sales & Marketing Officer at Vertafore and as an SVP of Marketing, Sales & Services at LexisNexis Software Solutions.
Veronica Curran
(CPO)Veronica Previously founded Magnolia People Solutions where she served as a Managing Partner for nearly 2 years. Prior to that, she was the Chief People and culture Officer at SmartBear and the CPO at Alumni Ventures Group.
Gopi Duddi
(CTO)Gopi joined Couchbase in 2022 as an SVP of Engineering, moving into the role of CTO in 2025. Prior to this, he spent 10 years at Amazon AWS, joining in 2012 as a Senior Manager of Database Services before moving into the role of GM. He also spent 7 years at IBM In various Managerial roles.
Josh Harbert
(CMO)Josh is also the co-founder and President of SustainableIT.org. Previously, he served as the CMO at Delphix and the VP of Marketing at Tanium and Qumulo.
Amir Jafari
(CFO)Amir is also the CFO/Head of Finance & Operations at Blend. Previously, he served as the CFO at Plastiq and Reputation.com.
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