Staff Engineer - Control Systems

Fastly helps people stay better connected with the things they love. Fastly’s edge cloud platform enables customers to create great digital experiences quickly, securely, and reliably by processing, serving, and securing our customers’ applications as close to their end-users as possible — at the edge of the Internet. The platform is designed to take advantage of the modern internet, to be programmable, and to support agile software development. Fastly’s customers include many of the world’s most prominent companies, including GitHub, Yelp, Paramount, and JetBlue.

About the role

The Control Systems team translates customer intent into the configuration data that powers Fastly's edge. Because our services are central to how every product and feature reaches the edge, this role offers a unique opportunity to partner with internal teams across the organization to shape, scale, and secure the core Fastly experience that our customers rely on every day.

As a Staff Software Engineer, you will join a talented group of engineers who solve complex problems in high-availability systems within a supportive environment where teammates genuinely enjoy working together. If you are a motivated engineer who thrives on solving interesting problems at scale while fostering a culture of high trust, mutual respect, and shared ownership, you’ll find a rewarding home here.

Responsibilities

• Support, deploy, and share responsibility for large scale Perl production systems that store and ship configuration changes to thousands of nodes globally.
• Drive architectural and operational improvements by evolving complex legacy systems into maintainable, performant Go microservices.
• Provide technical leadership of engineering projects, coordinate with project stakeholders, and motivate progress.
• Collaborate across engineering teams to ensure our configuration systems meet the requirements for new features and capabilities.
• Mentor and support other engineers, cultivating an environment of knowledge sharing, innovation, and teamwork within the engineering organization.
• Participate in an on-call rotation.

Requirements

• Significant domain-relevant engineering experience building highly reliable distributed systems. Most Staff Engineers at Fastly have at least 7 years of related experience.
• A solid understanding of the Go programming language.
• A pragmatic approach to legacy systems, including experience in or a willingness to learn Perl to support, troubleshoot, and enhance our core infrastructure.
• The ability to drive and deliver complex projects that span multiple teams and require cross-organizational influence.
• A communicative and empathetic teammate who works effectively in a remote environment and is comfortable with asynchronous workflows.
• An adaptable problem-solver who learns from mistakes, navigates ambiguity with ease, and balances short-term delivery with long-term quality through thoughtful tradeoffs.

Nice to have

• A background writing production-level code using the Perl programming language.
• Familiarity with containerization systems and platforms such as Kubernetes and Docker.
• Exposure to monitoring solutions such as Prometheus and Grafana.

Schedule

This position will require you to be available during core business hours. It may also require occasional nights and weekends as necessary for on-call support.

Work Location

The preferred locations for this position are San Francisco, CA; Denver, CO; or New York, NY. Fastly currently embraces a largely hybrid model for most roles which allows employees flexibility to split their time between the office and home. There is a strong preference for Hybrid near a local office. However, we may be willing to consider exceptionally qualified remote candidates within the US. This position may require travel as required by your role or requested by your manager.

Pay

The estimated salary range for this position is $211,370 to $253,644. Starting salary may vary based on permissible, non-discriminatory factors such as experience, skills, qualifications, and location. This role may be eligible to participate in Fastly’s equity and discretionary bonus programs.

Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• Family planning and mental health support along with an Employee Assistance Program.
• Insurance (Life, Disability, and Accident).
• Flexible Vacation policy and up to 18 days of accrued paid sick leave.
• 401(k) (including company match) and an Employee Stock Purchase Program.
• 11 paid local holidays and 12 paid company wellness days in 2026.

Why Fastly?

• We have a huge impact. Fastly is a small company with a big reach. Not only do our customers have a tremendous user base, but we also support a growing number of open source projects and initiatives.
• We value diversity. Growing and maintaining our inclusive and diverse team matters to us. We are committed to being a company where our employees feel comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work and have the ability to be successful — every day.
• We are passionate. Fastly is chock full of passionate people and we’re not ‘one size fits all’. Fastly employs authors, pilots, skiers, parents (of humans and animals), makeup geeks, coffee connoisseurs, and more. We love employees for who they are and what they are passionate about.