Principal Software Engineer

Role Description

Docusign is at a pivotal moment. We are transforming from the world's leading eSignature tool into an Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) platform. This shift requires more than just "stable" infrastructure; it requires a revolutionary approach to reliability. We are looking for a Principal SRE who doesn't just manage systems, but transforms them. You are an Engineering-First visionary who believes that the only way to achieve 99.99% reliability at scale is through code, not humans. You will be tasked with evolving our SRE organization from a traditional support-focused model into a lighthouse of engineering excellence that leads the company's technical strategy.

This position is an individual contributor role reporting to the VP, Engineering - Site Reliability.

Responsibilities

• Lead and code with the team
• Lead the cultural and technical shift toward treating reliability as a product feature
• Move the org away from reactive "ops" work toward building durable platforms and self-healing systems
• Possess elite Incident Commander skills while not expected to be in the daily on-call rotation, stepping in during high-stakes outages to bring calm and clarity, and use those experiences to architect systems that ensure those incidents never happen again
• Define the "Golden Paths" for our Cloud migration, ensuring that as Docusign scales globally, our architecture remains "Multi-Active" and impervious to regional cloud failures
• Challenge the status quo, mentoring Senior and Staff SREs to think like software architects
• Advocate for "Error Budgets" that have real teeth, influencing product roadmaps to prioritize long-term stability

Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience in large-scale distributed systems, software engineering, or infrastructure roles, with a track record of driving system architecture
• Experience as a software engineer by trade with deep proficiency in Go or Python, possessing a "code-first" approach and a passion for writing production-grade automation services alongside the engineering team
• Experience with proven technical leadership in building global, active-active distributed systems at hyperscale, functioning simultaneously as an architect and an engineering peer
• Experience with production-hardened mastery of Kubernetes and Terraform to manage complex, multi-tenant cloud topographies
• Experience acting as a primary Lead Incident Commander for tier-0 global outages, with the ability to translate operational chaos into actionable technical stabilization
• Experience defining "Developer Experience" strategies and contributing to Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) that bake resilience and infrastructure abstractions directly into developer workflows

Preferred Qualifications

• Technical expertise executing high-stakes on-premises to cloud migrations natively within Microsoft Azure (specifically utilizing Azure Kubernetes Service / AKS and Azure traffic routing)
• Hands-on experience architecting global distributed tracing capabilities using the OpenTelemetry ecosystem to track deep, user-centric SLO metrics across microservices
• Experience developing self-healing infrastructure patterns through a blend of deterministic code and AI-assisted/predictive anomaly remediation models
• Experience championing and setting up automated fault-injection frameworks to proactively prove system recoverability before a real production blast radius occurs
• Experience building safe deployment architectures (Canary, Blue/Green) managed via secure pipelines (GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps) with automated safety policies embedded directly into the code lifecycle

Wage Transparency

• California: $212,100.00 - $342,650.00 base salary
• Illinois, Colorado, Massachusetts and Minnesota: $202,100.00 - $285,500.00 base salary
• Washington, Maryland, New Jersey and New York (including NYC metro area): $202,100.00 - $299,625.00 base salary
• Washington DC: $212,100.00 - $299,625.00 base salary
• Ohio: $182,200.00 - $257,350.00 base salary

• Bonus: Sales personnel are eligible for variable incentive pay dependent on their achievement of pre-established sales goals. Non-Sales roles are eligible for a company bonus plan, which is calculated as a percentage of eligible wages and dependent on company performance.
• Stock: This role is eligible to receive Restricted Stock Units (RSUs).

Benefits

• Paid Time Off: earned time off, as well as paid company holidays based on region
• Paid Parental Leave: take up to six months off with your child after birth, adoption or foster care placement
• Full Health Benefits Plans: options for 100% employer paid and minimum employee contribution health plans from day one of employment
• Retirement Plans: select retirement and pension programs with potential for employer contributions
• Learning and Development: options for coaching, online courses and education reimbursements
• Compassionate Care Leave: paid time off following the loss of a loved one and other life-changing events