---
title: 'Lead Distributed Systems Engineer at Cape'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/lead-distributed-systems-engineer-cape-new-york-ffnn4axhmvaz'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Lead Distributed Systems Engineer at Cape

- **Company:** Cape
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-09-10
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/cape/7d19a584-40c0-47ea-9729-53a82d70a625

## Job description

## About Cape

Cape is America’s privacy-first mobile carrier. Our mission is to be a force for good in global wireless. Cape was founded in 2022 by people who believe privacy is a fundamental right, not a luxury to be traded away. Our journey began when our founder recognized a critical vulnerability in our modern world: everyone relies on the same stagnant cellular infrastructure and legacy systems that track our every movement, monitor and profile our connections, and lose and sell our personal data. Instead of accepting the status quo, we decided to fix it. National security professionals, journalists, parents, and everyone in between can stay connected and have privacy. We didn’t just build a layer on top of old tech; we built America’s most private and secure mobile carrier from the ground up. By building our own network from scratch, we are able to design and build a suite of privacy and security features that no other carrier on the planet can offer. Today, Cape provides our secure network to consumers, businesses, and government agencies alike. We closed our Series C in March 2026, and we are scaling rapidly, with the goal of giving people back control of their most personal information.

The Team At Cape, we are the architects of a privacy-centric movement that is just getting started. We are relentless builders, constantly innovating at the edge of what's possible in telecommunications. We operate on a foundation of high trust and high expectations. Our structure is flat, and collaboration matters more than hierarchy. As a member of our team, you will collaborate with world-class engineers, architects, and visionaries, and work across organizational lines to solve "impossible" problems and deliver mission-critical results for our users every single day.

## The Role

Cape runs private cellular networks that operate disconnected for weeks at a time. Getting subscriber state where it needs to be means delivering it to nodes we can't reach, over links we don't control, onto hardware we can't trust. You'll own the architecture and implementation of an edge data distribution system for private 5G bubbles, and lead the team that builds it. The core challenge is synchronizing data from the cloud to the edge reliably, securely, and efficiently. Because we are early in this product's lifecycle and iterating directly with customers, you will have significant autonomy to set the technical direction and shape the product definition. This is a large and high-complexity problem space with a variety of challenges spanning multiple disciplines including distributed systems, security and building out the services that power end user device connectivity.

## What You'll Work On

- Architecture and technical direction. The change propagation pipeline, the reconciliation model for nodes returning after long periods offline, the consistency and conflict-resolution semantics, the trust boundaries. You define the guarantees this system commits to, and you're accountable for whether they hold when a node comes back after six weeks with divergent state.
- Hands-on engineering. You lead the team and hold a high bar for execution, and you're most likely also rolling up your sleeves to build the hardest parts of the system yourself.
- Technical roadmap and prioritization. Maintain a clear view of what the deployments in front of us need while making room for the investments that don't show up in any single customer's requirements but determine what this system can do two years from now.
- Team. Recruit, develop, and retain strong distributed systems engineers. Set clear technical standards. Give people the context and the room to do good work.
- Cross-functional partnership. Be a credible, honest technical counterpart to product, our forward deployed engineers, and customers. Translate field constraints into what they actually cost. Bring solutions, not just constraints.
- Solving customer problems. You'll work directly with customers to understand their mission, ship something, watch how it holds up in their environment, and use what you learn to shape the next version. That includes knowing when the thing being asked for isn't the thing that's needed, and being able to educate the customer on the technical details of the solution.

## What We Value

- Reliability & Durability: Ensure data arrives exactly where it needs to be every time, leveraging an event-driven architecture so
- Offline Resiliency: Build services that remain functional and consistent when offline for extended periods of time
- Security in Contested Environments: Design systems under the explicit assumption that edge nodes cannot be inherently trusted and may become compromised at any point and design systems with this principle in mind
- Connectivity: Build and scale the core telephony services that provide data connectivity to user devices at the edge and in the cloud

## Experience

- Distributed systems depth: You've designed and operated distributed systems in production and have real scar tissue around replication, consistency, and partition-related failure modes. You can reason about a system's guarantees precisely rather than by analogy, and you know the difference between a system that works and a system that provably works every time.
- Event-driven architecture: Experience with Kafka, SQS, MQTT, RabbitMQ, Flink, or Spark in production. You understand delivery semantics, ordering, and replay well enough to reason about them under adverse conditions rather than happy-path ones.
- Correctness under pressure: You've worked in environments where losing data was not an acceptable outcome, and you've been in situations where a customer needed something shipped and the honest answer was that the design wasn't ready. You have a way of thinking about that tradeoff and you can defend your decisions clearly without being defensive about them.
- Engineering leadership: You have led engineers as a manager, a tech lead, or both. You can point to specific people you've grown and specific technical bets you owned end to end.
- Communication that moves things forward: You can both explain a consistency guarantee to a customer who wants a feature now and an operational reality to an engineer who's optimizing for the wrong constraint.
- Experience that’s helpful (though not required)
- Building software that runs on customer hardware, on-prem, air-gapped, or in similar disconnected environments
- Backend systems serving mobile devices or edge compute at scale
- Logical replication, CDC pipelines, or multi-region and active-active database architectures
- Radios, telephony, sim cards and modems or an appetite to learn about them
- Working with government or defense customers

## Compensation

We offer competitive compensation that is geo-adjusted based on your location, along with meaningful equity so you share in the value you help create. Salary range for this role in New York, New York is $250,000-$325,000 depending on experience and interview performance. Our benefits include:

- 401(k) match
- 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision premiums for you and your dependents
- 12 weeks paid parental leave (for all parents, no waiting period)
- Stipends for
- Family-forming needs
- Gender-affirming care

Our Culture & Values

- We hire excellent people, give them outsized responsibility, and trust them to execute. Every person at Cape has a proven track record of tackling hard problems and winning.
- We believe that personal privacy and national security are not at odds, and that they can be reconciled through strong technology.
- We believe companies exist to build awesome things and take care of the people who build them, so we offer top-tier healthcare, 401(k) matching, and a generous vacation policy that our team actually uses to recharge.
- We believe that a stronger company and a better product are built by people from all walks of life. We hire without regard to race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital status, disability, or Veteran status. If you are great at what you do, you belong here.

How to apply Click the link below to apply. We reserve the right to make use of any unsolicited resumes received from outside recruiting agencies and / or individual recruiters without being responsible for payment of any fees asserted from the use of unsolicited resumes. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin, and without regard to disability or status as a protected veteran, or any other status protected by law.

## About Cape

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Cape is a privacy-first mobile network operator that provides secure, private cellular service with minimal data collection and advanced security features for individuals and organizations.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series C)
- **Headquarters**: Arlington, Virginia, USA
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: John Doyle

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Telecommunications, Mobile Network Operator (MVNO), Privacy & Security
- **Target customers**: B2C (privacy-conscious consumers), B2B (enterprises), B2G (federal government, military, national security professionals)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: "Connectivity shouldn't cost you your privacy and security. We're redesigning telecommunications from the ground up for everyone from national security professionals to everyday people ready to take back control of their mobile identity." [cape.co](https://www.cape.co/about)

## Products & Services
- **Cape Mobile Service**: A premium MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) offering private and secure cell phone service with features including:
  - Minimal data collection (only what's needed to provide service, deleted as soon as possible)
  - SIM swap protection
  - Signaling protection
  - Secure global roaming
  - Network Lock
  - Identifier Rotation
  - Disappearing Call Logs
  - Encrypted voicemail
  - Private payments
  - Unlimited Talk and Text
- **Cape Obscura**: Selected as one of TIME's Best Inventions of 2025 [cape.co](https://www.cape.co/about)
- **Partnership Offerings**: Cape partners with Proton to provide Cape subscribers with Proton Unlimited or Proton VPN Plus [cape.co](https://www.cape.co/about)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Total Funding**: $181.6M across 6 rounds [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/capecellular)
  - Series C (March 2026): $100M co-led by Bain Capital Ventures and IVP
  - Series B (April 2024): $40M led by Andreessen Horowitz
  - Series A (June 2023): $21.4M
  - Debt Financing (March 2025): $15M from Silicon Valley Bank
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of $181.6M
- **Notable Investors/Partners**:
  - **Investors**: Bain Capital Ventures, IVP, Andreessen Horowitz, Silicon Valley Bank
  - **Partners**: Proton (digital privacy leader), Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), GrapheneOS project [cape.co](https://www.cape.co/about)
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Named among Fast Company's 2024 Most Innovative Companies [cape.co](https://www.cape.co/about)
  - Cape Obscura selected as one of TIME's Best Inventions of 2025
  - Recognized in the 2025 Military and Aerospace Electronics Innovators Awards Program
  - Officially emerged from beta into general availability (October 2025) [cape.co](https://www.cape.co/about)
  - Active job postings up 93.8% year-over-year [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/capecellular)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Privacy-by-design**: Collects minimal data, deletes it as soon as possible, never sells data — a true differentiator in the telecom industry
- **Security-first architecture**: Features like SIM swap protection, identifier rotation, disappearing call logs, and signaling protection are built-in, not bolt-ons
- **Deep expertise**: Founded by privacy-first innovators with deep expertise in security, telecom, and technology [cape.co](https://www.cape.co/about)
- **Federal & defense credibility**: Has a dedicated Federal Engineering team, Solutions Architects for the Air Force, and a Head of Navy Business — indicating strong traction in government/military sectors
- **Ecosystem partnerships**: Partnerships with EFF (providing free/discounted service to journalists and activists), Proton, and GrapheneOS create a strong community moat

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Expanding general availability post-beta, growing federal/defense business, scaling engineering team, building out APAC operations (Head of APAC hired)
- **Direction for growth**: Becoming the default mobile carrier for security-conscious individuals, enterprises, and government agencies; expanding international presence (operates in 6 countries including India, Canada, South Korea, Australia, and UK) [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/capecellular)

## Why Work Here
- **Culture highlights**:
  - Values: "Do excellent work," "Bias to action" (outcomes over process), "Overshare" (transparency), "Respect the opportunity" (building for mission-critical work) [cape.co](https://www.cape.co/careers)
  - "We don't accept 'the way things are done;' we're hackers who challenge the status quo and redefine the best way to do something. We make 10,000 mistakes, but own each one, and insist on learning quickly." [cape.co](https://www.cape.co/careers)
  - Small, autonomous teams with high ownership
- **Remote/hybrid/office policy**: Hybrid — offices in New York, NY; Arlington, VA; and Washington, DC; with some remote roles available [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/capecellular)
- **Notable perks & benefits** [cape.co](https://www.cape.co/careers):
  - 100% of insurance premiums covered for employee and dependents (Medical, Dental, Vision)
  - "Take what you need" PTO policy
  - Fully paid parental leave (12+ weeks for all parents)
  - 401k with 4% match
  - $20,000 family forming stipend (IVF, adoption, surrogacy)
  - $20,000 gender affirming care stipend
  - 12 weeks military leave with "make-whole" differential pay
- **Engineering culture**: 26% of employees are in technical roles; strong talent pipeline from Palantir, Anduril, Amazon Web Services, and Andreessen Horowitz [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/capecellular)
- **Open roles**: 31 active job postings including Senior Security Engineer, Full Stack Software Engineer, Software Engineer (Infrastructure, iOS, Android), Head of Federal Engineering, Solutions Architect (Air Force, East Asia), VP of Engineering [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/capecellular) [cape.co](https://www.cape.co/careers)

## Sources
1. [cape.co - About](https://www.cape.co/about)
2. [cape.co - Careers](https://www.cape.co/careers)
3. [cape.co - Home](https://www.cape.co/?g=int)
4. [linkedin.com - Cape Company Page](https://www.linkedin.com/company/capecellular)
5. [craft.co - Cape Company Profile](https://craft.co/cape-mobile)

## Other roles at Cape

- [Solutions Architect, Special Operations](https://feeny.ai/job/solutions-architect-special-operations-cape-arlington-52ts83a1jgxf) — Arlington, VA
- [Account Executive, Navy](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-navy-cape-arlington-34frpj801xws) — Arlington, VA
- [Technical Program Manager, Security](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-program-manager-security-cape-united-states-qe4rs1097sjh) — United States
- [HR Operations](https://feeny.ai/job/hr-operations-cape-new-york-b2sh4xr7m37b) — New York, NY
- [Head of People](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-people-cape-new-york-15k9bv87ychr) — New York, NY
- [IT Support Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/it-support-specialist-cape-new-york-n7pez691cwr9) — New York, NY
- [Security Engineer, Corporate Security](https://feeny.ai/job/security-engineer-corporate-security-cape-united-states-94pmzt0gqmce) — United States
- [Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)](https://feeny.ai/job/chief-information-security-officer-ciso-cape-new-york-qwwamgfmntsj) — New York, NY
- [Capture Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/capture-manager-cape-arlington-q2qmcpb869ct) — Arlington, VA
- [Business Intelligence and Research Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/business-intelligence-and-research-manager-cape-new-york-1dv69q8yb23d) — New York, NY