Senior Principal Software Engineer (IC5) – Kubernetes & OKE

Description

Are you ready to define and drive what’s possible in the world of cloud-native technologies? At Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), we’re on a mission to empower the largest enterprises and disruptors alike with infrastructure that combines the elasticity of public cloud and the security, reliability, and granular control demanded by mission-critical workloads.

The Kubernetes teams are at the forefront of this transformation—designing and delivering enterprise-grade Kubernetes that powers thousands of customer workloads globally. As a Senior Principal Software Engineer (IC5), you will be the technical force behind OKE’s next wave of innovation. Your expertise in distributed systems, containers, and Kubernetes will directly shape architectural direction, guide best practices, and influence major product strategy.

This isn’t just about delivering features—it’s about fundamentally raising the bar for engineering within OCI. You’ll lead large-scale, high-impact projects; collaborate across engineering, product, and operations; and mentor engineers at all levels, setting a vision for what exceptional cloud infrastructure can be.

What Makes This Opportunity Unique?

• Transform OCI’s Kubernetes Platform: Spearhead architectural design and technical strategy for OKE, with your decisions affecting customers worldwide and helping define the industry standard for cloud-native platforms.
• Drive End-to-End Solutions: Move beyond designing features—own the entire software lifecycle, from design and implementation to operations and monitoring, ensuring supreme reliability and scalability.
• Cross-Org Influence: You’ll regularly partner with product, security, operations, and support teams, influencing technical direction and advocating for best practices across OCI.
• Empower and Mentor: As a seasoned leader, you’ll nurture and develop a high-performing engineering culture—mentoring, coaching, and growing both individuals and teams.
• Innovate at Scale: You’ll solve complex engineering challenges like multi-tenant access, seamless integrations, automated operations, and resilient high-scale architectures.
• Represent Oracle: Step in as an internal and external thought leader—sharing expertise in technical forums, with strategic customers, and in the open source/CNCF community.

What You’ll Do

• Design, architect, and build core components for OKE and OCI’s Kubernetes ecosystem, addressing reliability, security, performance, and scale.
• Set and uphold engineering standards, best practices, and automation requirements for your team and the broader organization.
• Lead deep architecture reviews, identify technical risks and trade-offs, and guide teams across boundaries to deliver on ambitious roadmaps.
• Drive operational excellence through automation, observability, and continuous improvement—ensuring services are robust, reliable, and ready for 24x7 scale.
• Collaborate extensively with peer teams—security, networking, product, operations—to solve unique challenges and support critical customer needs.
• Contribute to the open source community, advocate for cloud-native technologies inside and outside the company, and help Oracle build strong industry partnerships.

Who You Are

• A veteran software engineer (10+ years) with deep expertise in distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and the Kubernetes ecosystem.
• Proficient in Go, Java, Python, or similar programming languages, with an automation-first mindset.
• Expert in architecting, deploying, and managing highly available container platforms at scale, ideally in public cloud environments.
• Known for your technical vision—you’ve set direction, influenced org-wide practices, and led multiple teams through substantial technical transformations.
• A collaborative leader: you thrive in cross-functional environments, relish mentoring others, and enjoy elevating the entire organization’s technical excellence.
• Passionate about customer outcomes and always looking for ways to innovate and improve the developer/operator experience.

Ready to shape the future of cloud infrastructure? Join OCI’s OKE team and lead from the front—delivering innovation that powers enterprises worldwide.

Responsibilities

• Architect, design, implement, and operate robust and scalable services for OKE and Kubernetes on OCI, focusing on high availability, reliability, and performance.
• Own and drive technical strategy and roadmaps for new and existing Kubernetes features, deep OCI integrations, and cloud-native automation tooling.
• Lead complex design reviews, identify and mitigate deep technical risks, and set the engineering quality bar for your team and organization.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with security, operations, product management, and customer teams—often influencing outcomes beyond your immediate team.
• Mentor and guide engineers through code reviews, architecture discussions, and hands-on technical leadership.
• Develop tooling, automation, and monitoring to improve operational excellence, reduce toil, and accelerate safe delivery of new features.
• Participate in customer engagements as a subject matter expert, helping solve their toughest container-platform challenges.

Qualifications
Disclaimer:

Certain US customer or client-facing roles may be required to comply with applicable requirements, such as immunization and occupational health mandates.

Range and benefit information provided in this posting are specific to the stated locations only

US: Hiring Range in USD from: $96,800 to $251,600 per annum. May be eligible for bonus, equity, and compensation deferral.

Oracle maintains broad salary ranges for its roles in order to account for variations in knowledge, skills, experience, market conditions and locations, as well as reflect Oracle’s differing products, industries and lines of business.
Candidates are typically placed into the range based on the preceding factors as well as internal peer equity.

Oracle US offers a comprehensive benefits package which includes the following:
1. Medical, dental, and vision insurance, including expert medical opinion
2. Short term disability and long term disability
3. Life insurance and AD&D
4. Supplemental life insurance (Employee/Spouse/Child)
5. Health care and dependent care Flexible Spending Accounts
6. Pre-tax commuter and parking benefits
7. 401(k) Savings and Investment Plan with company match
8. Paid time off: Flexible Vacation is provided to all eligible employees assigned to a salaried (non-overtime eligible) position. Accrued Vacation is provided to all other employees eligible for vacation benefits. For employees working at least 35 hours per week, the vacation accrual rate is 13 days annually for the first three years of employment and 18 days annually for subsequent years of employment. Vacation accrual is prorated for employees working between 20 and 34 hours per week. Employees working fewer than 20 hours per week are not eligible for vacation.
9. 11 paid holidays
10. Paid sick leave: 72 hours of paid sick leave upon date of hire. Refreshes each calendar year. Unused balance will carry over each year up to a maximum cap of 112 hours.
11. Paid parental leave
12. Adoption assistance
13. Employee Stock Purchase Plan
14. Financial planning and group legal
15. Voluntary benefits including auto, homeowner and pet insurance

The role will generally accept applications for at least three calendar days from the posting date or as long as the job remains posted.

Career Level - IC5