Senior Principal Engineer, Fastly
Platform Engineering
$287.6-345.1k
Edge cloud platform
Open for applications
Edge cloud platform
1001+ employees
Open for applications
$287.6-345.1k
1001+ employees
Company mission
To build a better internet — a safe place where good can thrive.
Role
Who you are
- 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
Desirable
- 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
What the job involves
- 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
- 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
- This position will require you to be available during core business hours and occasional nights and weekends as needed for on call support
Application process
- Anticipated Posting Close Date*: March 23, 2026
Our take
Internet users around the world have come to expect personalized, real-time digital experiences, but delivering these quickly and securely, while maintaining quality, can be a difficult task for businesses.
Fastly enables the companies to deliver fast, secure, and scalable online experiences. Its edge cloud platform moves data and applications closer to end-users — improving the user experience, putting the power back in developers’ hands, and enabling clients to focus on growing their businesses.
The company has helped several high-profile businesses, including Reddit, Pinterest, Stripe, EPIC Games, and more. Its offering is well-regarded in the space, demonstrated by it being named a 2022 Gartner® Peer Insights™ Customers’ Choice for Global CDN, as well as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Edge Development Platforms, Q4 2023 report.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
9% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 7 rounds)
Jan 2019
$40m
SERIES F
Jul 2018
$40m
SERIES F
Total funding: $259m
Company benefits
- Parental support and beyond: We support our families by offering generous time off for parental leave. And beyond that, we work hard to build a culture that allows for all employees to have the life outside work that they desire year round.
- Health and wellness: Your well-being matters here. Our health plans offer a variety of options, including full medical, dental, and vision coverage, short- and long-term disability insurance, mental health resources, and more.
- Invest in your future: We offer 401(k)/retirement plans, employee stock purchasing plans (ESPP), and reimbursements for learning and development programs — so we can support your ongoing growth and success.
- Keep learning and growing: Helping people go further means nurturing their talent. Through annual reimbursements for employee learning activities, regular hangouts and advice from our Senior Staff, talks from industry leaders, and cultural events — we offer tons of opportunities for people to learn. And we’re always looking to grow as a company, too: we collect employee engagement and experience data annually and leverage our Employee Experience Champion Network to understand employee feedback, so we can keep improving.
Company HQ
China Basin, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Kip Compton
(CEO)Kip joined the Fastly team in 2024 as CPO, becoming CEO in 2025. Prior to this, he was an SVP of Strategy & Business Development/Networking at Cisco.
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