Senior Software Engineer II, Network Datapath

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Massachusetts.

📋 Description

• Design, develop, and enhance high-performance network datapath software for DigitalOcean's cloud architecture.

• Construct and optimize packet-processing and forwarding systems focusing on throughput, latency, CPU efficiency, scalability, and reliability.

• Create networking functionalities across host, kernel, user space, and hardware-accelerated datapaths.

• Examine packet-processing paths and resolve any bottlenecks.

• Develop functionalities for routing, packet filtering, encapsulation, tunneling, load balancing, traffic steering, and network virtualization.

• Build observability, telemetry, debugging, and performance monitoring for datapath systems.

• Integrate software with DPUs, SmartNICs, programmable NICs, and hardware acceleration technologies.

• Create automated testing and benchmarking frameworks.

• Investigate production networking issues such as packet drops, latency, throughput degradation, CPU utilization, and unexpected traffic behaviors.

• Collaborate with teams across Network Infrastructure, Compute, Availability, Security, hardware, and other engineering disciplines.

• Contribute to the development of next-generation network architectures.

• Author RFCs, architecture documents, technical proposals, design documents, and implementation plans.

• Document technical decisions, trade-offs, performance characteristics, dependencies, and operational considerations.

• Participate in design reviews and provide technical guidance.

• Mentor engineers and enhance software engineering and networking practices.

⛳️ Requirements

• Extensive experience in designing and developing production software using C, C++, or Go.

• Deep understanding of networking and packet processing principles.

• Experience in developing software for Linux-based networking systems.

• Familiarity with TCP/IP, routing, switching, VLANs, VXLAN, BGP, ECMP, NAT, load balancing, and network virtualization.

• Proven experience in debugging and optimizing performance-sensitive systems.

• Knowledge of Linux networking internals, including the Linux kernel networking stack, network namespaces, sockets, queues, interrupts, and NIC drivers.

• Experience with DPDK, XDP, eBPF, AF_XDP, or SR-IOV.

• Proficient in multithreaded and concurrent software development.

• Strong understanding of performance analysis, profiling, benchmarking, and troubleshooting methodologies.

• Ability to analyze complex systems spanning hardware, operating systems, networking, and applications.

• Capacity to independently manage projects from technical design to implementation and production deployment.

• Excellent technical writing skills for RFCs, architecture/design documents, technical proposals, and other documentation.

• Strong communication skills and the ability to work effectively across multiple engineering teams.

• Experience with hardware-accelerated networking is highly desirable, including DPUs, SmartNICs, IPUs, programmable NICs, DPU-based networking, P4, PCIe, DMA, queues, interrupts, RSS, offloads, and NIC hardware architecture.

• Senior-level ownership of technical components, complex performance and reliability issues, scalable solutions, architectural bottlenecks, cross-organization collaboration, technical documentation, mentoring, and utilization of AI and modern engineering tools.

• Nice-to-have: experience in cloud networking or hyperscale infrastructure; knowledge of Linux kernel networking code or NIC drivers; production experience with DPDK/XDP/eBPF/AF_XDP or DPU datapaths; familiarity with 400G+ networking; expertise in high-performance packet processing; VXLAN/EVPN; programmable switches; proficiency with perf, eBPF tooling, flame graphs, hardware performance counters; benchmarking infrastructure; and open-source contributions.

🏝️ Benefits

• Reimbursement for relevant conferences, training, and educational opportunities.

• Access to over 10,000 courses on LinkedIn Learning.

• Employee Assistance Program.

• Opportunities for local employee meetups.

• Flexible time-off policy.

• Bonus eligibility based on individual and company performance.

• Equity compensation, including equity grants upon hiring.

• Option to participate in the Employee Stock Purchase Program.