Architect, Office of the CTO (San Francisco)

Posting Open Date: July 1, 2026

Anticipated Posting Close Date: July 14, 2026

Architect, Office of the CTO

Fastly helps people stay better connected with the things they love. We’re building a more trustworthy, performant, and secure internet, and we’re looking for a deeply technical, highly collaborative Architect to help shape the future of our platform.

We are looking for an Architect reporting directly to Fastly’s CTO to help shape Fastly’s long-term technical direction and scale Fastly’s ability to make durable architectural decisions. You will act as a force multiplier across Engineering and Product, amplifying the CTO’s impact across architecture and engineering reviews, product lifecycle decisions, and technical mentorship across the organization. You’ll combine deep, end-to-end technical acumen with the ability to define and communicate a clear, scalable, big-picture technical vision for Fastly.

What You'll Do

• Partner with the CTO and SVP of Engineering to shape, communicate, and implement Fastly’s long-term technical direction
• Improve the mechanisms Fastly uses to make durable architectural decisions, including review forums, technical principles, standards, and escalation paths in partnership with Engineering Leadership and CTO
• Serve as a trusted technical advisor, creating clarity around ambiguous technical problems to help teams make principled tradeoffs and raise the quality of architectural decision‑making
• Mentor senior engineers and technical leaders, helping them grow their scope, judgment, and influence
• Represent the CTO’s technical perspective in selected forums, including architecture reviews or product decisions, serving as his delegate
• Support strategic customer, partner, and executive conversations where deep technical credibility and long‑term platform context are required
• Identify emerging technologies and architectural opportunities that could improve Fastly’s customer experience, competitive position, or operating model
• Evangelize Fastly externally; speak at conferences, contribute to open source and participate in industry standards bodies

What We're Looking For

• Extensive experience as an Architect, Principal Engineer, Distinguished Engineer, Fellow, or equivalent senior technical leader
• Deep expertise in large‑scale distributed systems, edge computing, CDN, cloud infrastructure, networking, security, or related platform technologies
• Demonstrated ability to set technical vision and translate it into practical architecture, standards, and execution paths
• Strong judgment across technical, operational, product, customer, and business tradeoffs
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to any audience
• A track record of mentoring senior technical talent and helping others increase their impact
• Ability to influence across teams and functions without relying on formal authority
• Track record of simplifying complex systems and helping organizations converge on durable technical direction
• Ability to challenge constructively, build alignment, and lead through influence at the most senior levels of an engineering organization

Work Hours: This position will require you to be available during core business hours. It may also require occasional nights and weekends as necessary to support any on‑call coverage or escalations.

Work Location(s) & Travel Requirements:

• San Francisco, CA

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

This position may require travel as required by your role or requested by your manager.

SF / LA Fair Chance Ordinance Statement

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 $329,493 to $411,867.

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 outside of work is important too. We support our teams with great benefits that start on the first day of your employment with Fastly. We offer a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, and vision insurance, family planning, mental health support, Employee Assistance Program, life, disability, and accident insurance, a flexible vacation policy and up to 18 days of accrued paid sick leave. We also offer 401(k) (including company match) and an Employee Stock Purchase Program. For 2026, we offer 11 paid local holidays and 12 paid company wellness days.

Fastly is committed to ensuring equal employment opportunity and to providing employees with a safe and welcoming work environment free of discrimination and harassment. Our employment decisions are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, family or parental status, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.

Consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and federal or state disability laws, Fastly will provide reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact your Recruiter, or the Fastly Employee Relations team at View email address on apply.placed-app.com or View phone number on apply.placed-app.com.