--- title: 'Staff / Principal Software Engineer at CloudZero' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-principal-software-engineer-cloudzero-san-francisco-mbck6b34av12' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-10' --- # Staff / Principal Software Engineer at CloudZero - **Company:** CloudZero - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Compensation:** $220k–$290k - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** hybrid - **Posted:** 2026-06-04 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/cloudzero/9d3d8290-dc14-46f1-a322-6d6ca2dd2f9c ## Job description ## About the Role CloudZero is hiring Staff and Principal Software Engineers across our engineering organization. We're not filling a single seat. We're building a bench of senior technical talent across every team that makes CloudZero run. If you're the kind of engineer who wants to work on hard problems at real scale, own architecture decisions that matter, and see your work land directly in the hands of customers and operators, there's a place for you here. These roles sit at the intersection of technical depth and product impact. You'll be expected to lead from the front: designing systems, shaping roadmaps, mentoring engineers, and driving decisions that outlast any single sprint. The specific domain depends on where you land, but the bar and the opportunity are consistent across the org. Where You Might Work Agent Platform This team is the spearhead of CloudZero's push into AI cost intelligence. You'll work on the AI telemetry agent that captures what coding agents and AI workloads actually cost at the developer endpoint: token usage, cost per workflow, latency, and where the value goes. You'll design the data model, ship the agent, and work directly with product on what to expose to the customer. macOS first; other endpoints to follow. A second surface on this team is our Kubernetes metric agent, already in production across customer-controlled clusters, where you're solving for resource constraints you don't set and security postures you don't control. Billing Ingest This team owns the architecture at the heart of the product: the backend data processing, storage, and query infrastructure that everything else depends on. You'll design data models, maintain and enhance a custom-built query engine, and build for scale as we onboard customers with increasingly large datasets and complex analytical requirements. If you want to work on the pipeline that processed 14 trillion billing events in the last twelve months, this is where you do it. Platform Services and Applications This team owns what customers touch every day: cost intelligence features like dimensions, CostFormation, and Explorer UI, as well as the identity and authentication layer including SSO, RBAC, and multi-tenancy for enterprise customers. When you ship a feature here, customers use it immediately and you hear about it. No layers of abstraction between your work and user value. Integrations This team builds and maintains all billing connectors across every provider CloudZero supports, and is actively expanding into AI data ingestion, building the pipelines that handle new sources of AI telemetry for customers running AI-forward workloads. If you want breadth of system surface and a fast-moving target, this is it. Cost Optimization This team owns some of CloudZero's most customer-visible product features. That includes Optimize, which the team fully overhauled and rebuilt in FY2026, and Anomaly Detection, which is being rebuilt around a new AI-driven detection engine. The team also owns Ticket Integrations, Notifications, Views, and Budgets. If you want to work at the product surface where engineering decisions translate directly into customer outcomes, and where AI is actively reshaping what the feature set looks like, this team is doing that work now. ## What You'll Do - Own significant technical domains end to end: architecture, implementation, and the long-term health of the systems you build - Make and communicate high-impact design decisions across teams and stakeholders - Identify and drive improvements to performance, scalability, and reliability before they become incidents - Collaborate with product, engineering leadership, and customers to scope problems and deliver solutions that move the business - Raise the technical bar for the engineers around you through code review, design feedback, and direct mentorship - Operate with a high degree of autonomy; you don't need a ticket to identify a problem worth solving ## What You Bring - Significant experience building and operating production backend systems at scale - Strong proficiency in Python and/or another backend language; comfort reading and reasoning about systems in languages you didn't write - Deep familiarity with cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred), distributed systems, and the tradeoffs that come with scale - Experience with data pipelines, ETL frameworks, or stream processing in production environments - Strong SQL and hands-on experience with cloud data warehouses (Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, or similar) - You use AI tools in your own data platform work. You can describe your own workflow and the failure modes you've worked around. Strategy-deck AI doesn't qualify; we want hands-on - You've built something that other internal teams have adopted. A library, a pattern, a service. - The ability to communicate technical complexity clearly to engineers, product, and leadership - A track record of shipping, not just designing Bonus If You Have... - Experience building or operating agents, telemetry systems, or observability tooling - Familiarity with Kubernetes, especially in customer-managed environments - Experience with AWS Step Functions, Lambda, or event-driven architectures - Background in FinOps, billing systems, or financial data infrastructure - Exposure to ML pipelines or AI workload cost modeling ## About CloudZero CloudZero is the AI ROI Company. We built the financial control plane for AI: the system finance, IT, and engineering use to connect every AI dollar to the outcome it produced. Across every provider. In real time. AI spend is the fastest-growing line on enterprise P&Ls and the least understood. Only 14% of CFOs can prove AI ROI today. CloudZero answers the question no one else can: what did it cost to produce this outcome, for this customer, on this model. The largest cloud spenders on the planet already run on CloudZero, including Coinbase, Duolingo, DoorDash, and Shutterstock. We processed 14 trillion billing events in the last twelve months. We're the first listed partner on Anthropic's cost and usage API. We've raised over $119 million, including a[$56 million Series C](https://www.cloudzero.com/press-releases/20250528/) backed by leading venture capital firms. Why Join Our Team? At CloudZero, you’ll find a collaborative, fast-moving environment where your work makes a direct impact. We’re a team that values ownership, creativity, and curiosity — and we’re tackling some of the most complex challenges in the cloud space. If you’re excited by working with cutting-edge technology, driving meaningful outcomes, and growing with a company that’s scaling fast, we’d love to hear from you! ## About CloudZero ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: CloudZero is the AI ROI Company that provides a financial control plane for cloud and AI spend, helping businesses connect every dollar spent to measurable business outcomes. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series B) - **Headquarters**: Boston, Massachusetts, USA - **Founded**: 2016 - **Founders**: Erik Peterson (co-founder) ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: FinOps / Cloud Cost Management / AI Spend Intelligence - **Target customers**: B2B, Enterprise (Engineering leaders like CTOs, VPs of Engineering; Finance leaders like CFOs, FP&A; Platform and cloud ops teams) - **Mission / Purpose**: To help the world's most ambitious businesses turn cloud and AI spend into measurable value. The company's vision is to be the only platform to quantify and maximize the ROI of every cloud and AI dollar spent. ## Products & Services - **CloudZero Platform**: A SaaS platform that unifies cost and usage data from any AI platform, cloud provider (AWS, GCP, Azure), and SaaS tool (Snowflake, Datadog, MongoDB, Kubernetes) into a single pane of glass. It provides multi-dimensional allocation, real-time anomaly detection, and AI outcome attribution. - **CostFormation**: A code-driven approach for allocating costs, allowing platform and cloud ops teams to author allocation structure so finance and engineering see the same numbers. - **AI Hub**: Connects AI spend to specific models, providers, prompt patterns, and coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot) to show cost context where engineers work. - **Analytics (BI capability)**: A business intelligence feature released in 2023 to improve business efficiency. - **AnyCost**: An API launched in 2019 to combine cost data from any cloud provider. ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed. - **Key Metric**: Over $14 billion in cloud spend under management. The company raised $32 million in Series B funding. - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not fully disclosed, but notable milestones include joining the AWS ISV Accelerate Program, the FinOps Foundation Governing Board, and achieving SOC 1 Type 2 certification. Phil Pergola (former CloudHealth executive) joined as CEO. - **Growth Signals**: Named a "Strong Performer" in the Forrester CCMO Wave, a "Visionary" in the Gartner MQ for CFM Tools, and "Best Places to Work" by Boston Business Journal. The platform is certified by the FinOps Foundation. Average time to pay for itself is 3 months, with average cloud savings of 22% in year one and a 33% average Cloud Efficiency Rate improvement. ## Competitive Advantages - **Depth of Allocation**: The only engine that allocates AI, cloud, and Kubernetes cost at the depth of customer, feature, workflow, and model, fueling unit economics. - **Real-time Data**: Streaming telemetry captures every AI call as it happens, with anomaly signals in seconds and full dimensional allocation in hours. - **Outcome Attribution**: Maps AI spend to business outcomes (customer, product, transaction, P&L), not just activity metrics. - **No Monthly Overages**: Uses a tiered, predictable pricing model that doesn't vary month to month. - **Speed to Value**: Can connect in minutes and uncover unit cost metrics in hours. ## Strategic Focus - **AI ROI Leadership**: Positioning itself as the "AI ROI Company," the strategic focus is on helping companies govern AI spend and value as AI adoption explodes. - **Category Creation**: Moving from category-creator to category-leader in the AI financial control plane space. - **Platform Expansion**: Continuing to integrate with more AI platforms, coding agents, and business systems to unify the cost conversation across engineering and finance. ## Why Work Here - **Remote-First Environment**: The company is remote-first, with a hub in Boston. - **Culture & Values**: Core values include "Commit then iterate," "Own the outcome," "We, not I," "Delight the customer," "Nothing is sacred," "Less is more," and "Wait for no one." - **Benefits**: Flexible Time Off, Home Office Stipend, "CZ Wellness" program, Recognition Program, Commuter Stipend, Catered Lunches, Focus Fridays, AI Build Days, and a Holiday Schedule. - **Engineering Culture**: Emphasizes high-bar, low-ego talent, and a passion for all things cloud. The company is described as a "tight-knit team in a high-growth, fast-moving environment." - **Growth Trajectory**: Job seekers are drawn to the opportunity to work at a high-growth startup that is defining a new category in AI spend intelligence. ## Sources 1. [CloudZero.com](https://www.cloudzero.com/) 2. [CloudZero About Page](https://www.cloudzero.com/about/) 3. [CloudZero Careers Page](https://www.cloudzero.com/careers/) 4. [CloudZero Jobs (Ashby)](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/cloudzero) 5. [Built In Boston - CloudZero](https://builtin.com/company/cloudzero/faq/workplace-perception) ## Other roles at CloudZero - [Senior AI Systems Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-ai-systems-engineer-cloudzero-boston-077tq4myxg1d) — Boston, MA - [Technical Support Engineer II](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-support-engineer-ii-cloudzero-boston-m6mpncc0p1p3) — Boston, MA - [Senior Product Marketing Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-product-marketing-manager-cloudzero-boston-kcpebqvk70fv) — Boston, MA - [Staff/Principal Software Engineer-Windows Endpoint Agent](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-principal-software-engineer-windows-endpoint-agent-cloudzero-remote-f7nw3tr1rpev) - [Senior Director, Revenue Operations](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-director-revenue-operations-cloudzero-boston-9gva59n4f4jx) — Boston, MA - [Senior Content Marketing Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-content-marketing-manager-cloudzero-boston-5p5w4vw9jwm3) — Boston, MA - [AI ROI Consultant](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-roi-consultant-cloudzero-boston-p3der7w7yxpa) — Boston, MA - [Senior Technical Account Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-technical-account-manager-cloudzero-boston-w0bzae0yzv77) — Boston, MA - [Staff Technical Account Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-technical-account-manager-cloudzero-boston-qh9y3hdf2jy8) — Boston, MA - [Director, Brand & Corporate Communications](https://feeny.ai/job/director-brand-corporate-communications-cloudzero-san-francisco-b1gre1y8v4a4) — San Francisco, CA