Principal Software Engineer - Next-Generation API & AI Platform Architecture Austin, Texas | Remote (Austin)

Lots of tech firms offer a fun place to work, but at SpyCloud, that’s only one part of the equation. Members of #TeamSpyCloud share a common purpose and a fantastic culture of collaboration and innovation.

SpyClouders come to work everyday with the mission to disrupt cybercrime. We’re driven to stay one step ahead of criminals attempting to profit from stolen data. You won’t meet a smarter, more focused group of people than the ones you’ll find at SpyCloud.

If you’re an inventive, creative problem-solver looking to up your game, energized by collaborating with the very best and brightest to prevent cybercrime, and passionate about making the internet safer together – apply to join our team!

About SpyCloud

Headquartered in Austin, Texas, SpyCloud is home to more than 200 cybersecurity experts who aim to make the internet a safer place with automated solutions that help organizations combat cybercrime.

SpyCloud protects people and organizations from identity-based attacks, including account takeover, session hijacking, ransomware, and online fraud. We’re on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 list and have been a Top 10 Austin Business Journal Best Place to Work multiple years in a row. Our customers include 8 of the Fortune 10, along with hundreds of other companies from around the world – household names who trust SpyCloud to protect their employees and consumers.

WHAT DEFINES US?

Our core values

Focused

Our customers are threatened by actors who live to cause harm. Everything we do aims to stop these injustices.

Grounded

We’re measured by what we discover and prevent. Our solutions solve real challenges in customers’ lives.

Driven

We live to act, because threats never sleep. We’re also optimists who inspire each other to reach our goals.

Insightful

We ask questions, seek the real issues, and reduce the noise to actionable truths.

Inventive

Curiosity is a necessity for us. We thirst for puzzles that prove our mettle.

United

Individually we’re awesome. Together we’re unstoppable. Our best ideas happen when we pool our perspectives.

We believe happy and supported employees are the most productive. SpyCloud offers a range of benefits, perks and programs to help our team live well and do their best work.

Work/life balance

We offer generous PTO and a remote-friendly culture.

Compensation

Our talented employees enjoy competitive salaries and equity.

401K matching

Investing in the future of our employees is a no-brainer.

SpyCares

We’re only as strong as the communities we’re a part of and giving back is in our DNA.

Open positions

Explore current job openings at SpyCloud

SpyCloud is an equal opportunity workplace. We eagerly seek applicants of diverse background and hire without regard to race, religion, color, sex (including pregnancy), age, national origin, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other status protected by law. We also take the security of our applicants information seriously. SpyCloud will only reach out via email provided to schedule next steps and will not call or text an applicant before the email communication.

Principal Software Engineer – Next-Generation API & AI Platform Architecture

Austin, Texas | Remote

SpyCloud is on a mission to make the internet a safer place by disrupting the criminal underground. SpyCloud’s solutions thwart cyberattacks and protect more than 4 billion accounts worldwide. Cybersecurity is an exciting, evolving space, and being at the forefront of the fight to disrupt cybercrime makes SpyCloud a special place to work. If you’re driven to align your career with a fantastic mission, look no further!

We are seeking a Principal Engineer to lead the hands‑on architecture and development of our next‑generation data and intelligence APIs. This role is deeply technical and execution‑focused, responsible for defining API contracts, building production services, and architecting the platform interfaces high‑performance throughput, agentic workflows and external customer integrations.

You will operate at the intersection of distributed systems, data platforms, and agentic orchestration, ensuring our APIs are scalable, governed, observable, and designed for long‑term evolution. This role requires strong systems thinking, high‑quality implementation standards, and the ability to translate platform strategy into production‑grade services.

This is a hands‑on engineering role with architectural authority.

• Architect and implement customer‑facing data and intelligence APIs with clear versioning, SLAs, and backward compatibility.
• Define and enforce API contracts for:
• Low latency, high throughput endpoints
• Agentic workflows (tools, actions, state transitions, handoffs)
• Context retrieval and enrichment
• Design APIs as durable platform interfaces, not thin wrappers over storage systems.
• Establish standards for schema governance, payload design, and service boundaries.
• Agentic & ML Platform Integration
• Architect service layers that support agentic workflows, including orchestration interfaces, guardrails, and runtime observability.
• Build API surfaces that expose model outputs safely and consistently.
• Collaborate with MLEs and Data Scientists to move models from experimentation into robust inference services.
• Ensure proper lifecycle management, monitoring, and rollback mechanisms for ML‑powered endpoints.
• Data Platform & Context Hubs
• Design and implement service layers that sit on top of the gold‑layer system of record.
• Build and evolve context hubs derived from authoritative systems of record, enabling consistent entity, identity, or risk context for downstream services.
• Ensure APIs are aligned with medallion architecture principles and platform data contracts.
• Prevent fragmentation by maintaining strong coupling to canonical schemas and governed data models.
• Distributed Systems & Reliability
• Design high‑throughput, low‑latency services supporting batch and streaming workloads.
• Implement scalable infrastructure patterns on AWS.
• Ensure strong observability, error handling, performance tuning, and cost awareness.
• Drive infrastructure‑as‑code practices and production readiness standards.
• Technical Leadership
• Serve as a senior architectural voice in design reviews.
• Raise the bar on code quality, system design, and operational rigor.
• Mentor engineers on API design, distributed systems, and ML integration patterns.
• Influence platform direction through technical depth rather than organizational authority

• 10+ years of experience building distributed systems, APIs, or large‑scale data platforms.
• Deep experience designing and implementing customer‑facing APIs as long‑lived products.
• Strong understanding of schema governance, versioning strategies, and contract design.
• Experience productionizing ML models and exposing inference services.
• Experience designing or integrating agentic or autonomous workflows.
• Experience building service layers on top of systems of record or semantic data layers.
• Strong background in distributed systems reliability, observability, and scalability.
• Proficiency in Go & Python (and/or backend service languages).
• Hands‑on experience with Databricks/Snowflake
• Strong experience with AWS infrastructure and infrastructure‑as‑code tools

• AWS services including Redshift, S3, EC2, and related cloud‑native tooling.
• Data stores including Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL, Redis, and graph databases (e.g., Neo4j or AWS Neptune).
• Experience building high‑performance APIs and service layers over heterogeneous data systems.
• Familiarity with Databricks/Snowflake and/or SageMaker is a plus.
• Experience in cybersecurity, identity, fraud, or risk systems is a plus.

U.S.-Based Benefits + Perks (for Full Time Employees)

At SpyCloud, we are committed to working alongside individuals who are equally passionate about preventing cybercrime, regardless of their department or role. Guided by our core values in all business decisions, we prioritize unity in our mission and ensure all SpyCloud employees have the support and benefits they need to stay focused on our goals. In addition to our engaging workspace in South Austin, flexible and remote‑friendly work options, and competitive salary package, we offer our employees a comprehensive benefits package that includes:

• 401(k) with Employer Contribution
• Health, Vision, and Dental Insurance
  • Health Savings Account (HSA) available with Employer Contribution
• Employer Paid Life, Short‑term, and Long‑term Disability Insurance
• Generous PTO Plan and 16 paid holidays per year

U.K.-Based Benefits + Perks (for Full Time Employees)

• Retirement Savings Plan with Employer Contribution
• Employer Provided Private Health Insurance and Healthcare Cashplan
• Employer Paid Life Insurance and Income Replacement
• Generous Holiday Plan and 14 paid holidays per year

About SpyCloud:

SpyCloud transforms recaptured darknet data to disrupt cybercrime. Its automated identity threat protection solutions leverage advanced analytics and AI to proactively prevent ransomware and account takeover, detect insider threats, safeguard e]]> <