Principal Software Engineer

Location: Bangalore; Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Department: Engineering

Principal Software Engineer (DevOps)

Department: Engineering

Level: IC – Senior

Location: Bangalore

Type: Full-Time

Reports To: Senior Engineering Manager

About Cleo 

Cleo is the AI-native supply chain orchestration company built on modern EDI. We help businesses orchestrate EDI, API, MFT, applications, and trading partner ecosystems with the visibility, intelligence, and control needed to keep business-critical supply chain transactions moving — from order to cash, procure to pay, and everywhere in between.

Our platform, Cleo Integration Cloud, brings together integration, workflow automation, real-time monitoring, and Agentic AI intelligence so supply chain, operations, and IT teams can launch partners faster, automate transactions across business systems, resolve exceptions before they become disruptions, and gain actionable insight across the end-to-end supply chain.

Trusted by 5,000+ customers across manufacturing, retail, logistics, and distribution, Cleo is headquartered in Rockford, Illinois, with offices in Chicago and Bangalore. We are a team united by one mission: to make supply chains smarter. Cleo Never Stops.

About the Role

We are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to shape how our AWS-based SaaS products are built, deployed, and operated. This is a hands-on technical leadership role for an engineer with prior software development experience and deep expertise in AWS, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, automation, and observability.

You will partner with application, platform, product, and security teams to improve the full software delivery lifecycle. You will modernize existing applications by reducing unnecessary coupling and enabling components to be built, tested, released, and deployed independently where the architecture supports it. You will also set technical direction across teams, lead complex modernization initiatives, and mentor engineers in the Bangalore organization.

What You Will Do

DevOps Strategy and Technical Leadership

• Define DevOps and platform engineering standards, reference architectures, delivery patterns, and operational practices.
• Lead cross-team initiatives that improve delivery speed, reliability, security, and maintainability.
• Make and communicate technical decisions that balance modernization, customer impact, and service continuity.
• Mentor engineers, lead knowledge-sharing sessions, and contribute to hiring and technical interviews.

Application Modernization and Software Engineering

• Apply software development experience to understand application architecture, dependencies, build systems, runtime behavior, and operational risks.
• Assess existing applications and reduce tight coupling between components, services, shared libraries, and deployment units where practical.
• Enable components to be built, tested, versioned, and deployed independently 
• Improve configuration, secrets handling, health checks, logging, metrics, and graceful startup and shutdown behavior.
• Build automation and engineering tools using a programming or scripting language such as Python, Go, Groovy, or shell.

CI/CD and Developer Experience

• Design, implement, and operate CI/CD platforms using GitHub Actions and Jenkins.
• Build and maintain reusable workflows, pipeline templates, and shared components using pipeline-as-code.
• Create reliable workflows for builds, automated tests, code quality checks, container creation, artifact management, deployment, and environment promotion.
• Integrate appropriate security and quality checks, including dependency and container scanning and secrets detection.
• Manage workflow permissions and credentials using least privilege and short-lived credentials or federated identity where supported.
• Improve build and deployment reliability through caching, parallel execution, consistent toolchains, and clear failure diagnostics.
• Modernize existing Jenkins pipelines and integrate them with GitHub repositories and Actions where appropriate.
• Improve developer experience with self-service workflows, standard templates, documentation, and actionable pipeline feedback.
• Comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguous requirements, and can adapt quickly as the landscape shifts.

AWS, Kubernetes, and Infrastructure as Code

• Architect, operate, and improve AWS environments, with strong hands-on experience in services such as EKS, ECS, EC2, RDS, S3, Route 53, IAM, ACM, ALB, Lambda, VPC etc.
• Design and operate multi-account AWS environments, including networking, CIDR allocation, routing, VPN connectivity, DNS, certificates, cross-account access, and security controls.
• Build and maintain reusable infrastructure as code using Terraform; use CloudFormation where appropriate.
• Establish practices for IaC module design, environment configuration, review, testing, change planning, drift detection, and state management.
• Use Docker, Kubernetes, Helm and GitOps practices to deliver consistent application deployments.

AI-Augmented Engineering and Operations

• Lead adoption of AI coding assistants and agents across platform work, such as authoring Terraform modules, pipeline templates, and Helm charts, and speeding up Jenkins-to-GitHub-Actions migrations. Keep guardrails in place: code review, policy-as-code, automated tests, and plan/apply approvals.
• Build AI-assisted steps into CI/CD, such as automated PR review, build and test failure triage, flaky-test detection, and plain-language failure summaries for developers.
• Provide platform support for teams shipping AI features. This covers secure access to model APIs (e.g., Amazon Bedrock), GPU or inference workloads on EKS where needed, prompt and model versioning, evaluation gates in pipelines, and cost visibility for AI usage.
• Define governance for AI agents that act on infrastructure. That means least-privilege, short-lived credentials for agents, audit trails, human approval for production changes, and protection against data leakage and prompt injection.
• Measure the impact of AI adoption with delivery and reliability metrics (e.g., DORA), and share what works through the knowledge-sharing sessions already in the role.

What You Bring

• Significant experience in DevOps, Platform Engineering, or a closely related discipline.
• Prior hands-on software development experience and the ability to work effectively with application code, build systems, and service architecture.
• Strong experience modernizing applications and reducing dependencies that unnecessarily constrain build and deployment practices.
• Deep hands-on expertise with AWS tech stacks.
• Strong knowledge of infrastructure-as-code, particularly Terraform, including reusable modules and environment-specific change management.
• Hands-on experience designing and operating CI/CD platforms, including GitHub Actions. Experience with Jenkins or similar systems is also expected.
• Practical experience with Docker, Helm, GitOps, Kubernetes, automated testing, artifact management, and deployment strategies.
• Strong programming or automation skills in at least one of Python, Go, Groovy, or shell scripting.
• Solid understanding of cloud networking, VPCs, routing, load balancing, DNS, VPNs, IAM, TLS certificates, and multi-account architectures.
• Experience with observability and incident-management tools such as Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, CloudWatch, Alertmanager, or Opsgenie.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to explain technical decisions and trade-offs clearly to technical and business stakeholders.
• Hands-on experience using AI coding assistants or agents in daily engineering work, with sound judgment about when output needs verification and how to review it.
• Understanding of the security and operational risks of AI tooling in delivery pipelines and cloud environments.
• Preferred: experience deploying or operating AI/LLM-powered services on AWS, or building AI-driven automation for CI/CD or incident response.

Preferred Qualifications

•  12+ years of relevant professional experience.
• B.E., B.Tech., M.Tech., MCA, or equivalent qualification in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related discipline.

Behavior Competencies

Initiative & Innovation- Ability to be proactive and develop new ideas

Level 3: Creativity- Analyzes anomalies and develops appropriate solutions. Creates new ideas and concepts considering a broad range of internal and external parameters.

Leadership & Management- Ability to work within or lead a team

Level 2: Team Leadership- Is the driving force in a team, spreading enthusiasm. Can lead a small team for a limited period and specific responsibility.

Planning & Organization- Ability to manage tasks and activities

Level 2: Scheduling- Independently schedules and resources complex work. Prioritizes in coherence with team and project objectives, flagging risks proactively.

Customer Focus- Ability to manage relationships with customers

Level 3: Customer Care- Ensures customers' real and perceived needs are considered in the delivery of products and services.

Interpersonal Communication- Ability to communicate effectively with people

Level 3: Assertive Influence- Confidently influences others through assertiveness while taking their points of view into account. Considers cultural references through interpersonal communication.

Achievement Focus- Ability to achieve objectives

Level 3: Decision Making- Makes decisions at the appropriate time, taking into account priorities, constraints, and available information.

Solution Finding- Ability to analyze situations and find accurate solutions

Level 3: Conceptual Thinking- Acquires understanding of the underlying issues in complex situations by relating them to simpler concepts, models, or previous experiences.

People Focus- Ability to account for the human factor

Level 2: Efficiency of Staff- Actively models stress management and positive team dynamics. Surfaces and de-escalates tensions early.

AI Fluency

AI fundamentally changes how they engineer: defaults to AI-first approaches where appropriate and has built workflows, tooling, or practices that improve output beyond just themselves. Demonstrates strong judgment about tradeoffs and failure modes.

Architect end-to-end AI-powered systems integrating LLM APIs such as Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, and AWS Bedrock into production applications Design and implement agentic workflows including tool use, memory, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations that connect AI models to real data sources and services Lead architectural decisions around latency, cost, observability, and safety when LLMs are in the critical path of a product.

Why Cleo

Join. Grow. Lead the Future of Supply Chain.

At Cleo we don't just manage supply chains — we orchestrate them. You'll be empowered to drive transformation, deliver excellence, and shape the future of global operations. Whether you're joining us from outside or growing within, this is your platform to lead with purpose, innovate with impact, and thrive in a culture that champions your growth.

WHY JOIN US

Strategic Influence

Be at the helm of global supply chain strategy, driving decisions that impact customers, partners, and communities worldwide.

Innovation-Driven Culture

Work with the latest in AI, automation, and digital supply chain platforms to solve complex challenges.

End-to-End Visibility

Lead across planning, sourcing, logistics, and fulfillment — connecting dots others can't see.

Sustainability at the Core

Help build ethical, transparent, and sustainable supply chains that make a difference.

WHY GROW WITH US

Leadership Development

Access world-class programs, executive mentorship, and rotational opportunities to accelerate your career.

Internal Mobility

We prioritize internal talent — your next big opportunity could be just one conversation away.

Recognition & Impact

Your ideas matter.Your leadership is visible. Your success is celebrated.

Inclusive Community

Thrive in a diverse, collaborative environment where every voice is heard and respected.

We are a Talent Destination for supply chain leaders who want to make bold moves, solve real world problems, and grow without limits. Whether you're stepping into your first leadership role or scaling new heights — your journey starts here. Cleo Never Stops.

Total Rewards

Benefits

• Group Medical Insurance & Group Personal Accident Insurance coverage
• PF & Retiral benefits
• Flexible PTO and company holidays
• Wellness Benefit of 15000 per year
• Cleo Cares - CSR initiatives

Equal Opportunity Statement

Cleo is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Cleo is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.