Senior Software Engineer II, Network Datapath
DigitalOcean4 hours ago
Base Salary
$167k - $209k/yr
Responsibilities
- Design, develop, and optimize high-performance network datapath software for DigitalOcean’s cloud infrastructure.
- Build packet-processing and forwarding systems optimized for throughput, latency, CPU efficiency, scalability, and reliability.
- Develop networking functionality across host systems, the Linux kernel, user space, and hardware-accelerated datapaths.
- Implement routing, packet filtering, encapsulation, tunneling, load balancing, traffic steering, and network virtualization.
- Build datapath observability, telemetry, debugging, performance monitoring, automated testing, and benchmarking frameworks.
- Integrate datapath functionality with DPUs, SmartNICs, programmable NICs, and other hardware acceleration technologies.
- Investigate production networking issues involving packet drops, latency, throughput degradation, CPU utilization, and unexpected traffic behavior.
- Drive projects from technical design through implementation and production deployment, and contribute to next-generation network architectures.
- Write RFCs, architecture documents, technical proposals, design documents, implementation plans, and technical decision documentation.
- Participate in design reviews, provide technical guidance, mentor engineers, and improve engineering and networking practices.
Requirements
- Strong experience designing and developing production software in C, C++, or Go.
- Strong understanding of networking, packet processing, and Linux-based networking systems.
- Knowledge of TCP/IP, routing, switching, VLANs, VXLAN, BGP, ECMP, NAT, load balancing, and network virtualization.
- Experience debugging and optimizing performance-sensitive, multithreaded, and concurrent systems.
- Understanding of Linux networking internals, including the kernel networking stack, namespaces, sockets, queues, interrupts, and NIC drivers.
- Experience with one or more of DPDK, XDP, eBPF, AF_XDP, or SR-IOV.
- Strong understanding of performance analysis, profiling, benchmarking, and troubleshooting.
- Ability to reason across hardware, operating systems, networking, and applications and independently drive complex projects.
- Strong technical writing and communication skills, including the ability to produce RFCs and architecture or design documents.
- Experience with hardware-accelerated networking, DPUs, SmartNICs, IPUs, programmable NICs, DPU-based networking, or programmable datapaths is valuable.
- Understanding of PCIe, DMA, queues, interrupts, RSS, offloads, and NIC hardware architecture is valuable.
- Experience with cloud or hyperscale networking, Linux kernel networking code, NIC drivers, 400G+ networking, VXLAN/EVPN, programmable switches, performance tools, or open-source networking projects is preferred.
Benefits
- Remote role.
- Reimbursement for relevant conferences, training, and education.
- Access to LinkedIn Learning’s 10,000+ courses.
- Employee Assistance Program, local employee meetups, and flexible time off.
- Potential bonus, equity compensation, equity grants upon hire, and Employee Stock Purchase Program.
- Benefits may vary based on local regulations and preferences.
About DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean provides cloud infrastructure and platform services for developers, startups, and small to mid-sized businesses, including virtual machines (Droplets), managed Kubernetes and databases, object/block storage, networking, and GPUs for AI workloads. It operates a usage-based, self-service public cloud with APIs, CLI, and a marketplace to deploy and scale applications. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, DigitalOcean is a public company listed on the NYSE.