Staff Engineer, Network Infrastructure

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

📋 Description

• Design and develop automation and orchestration systems for DigitalOcean's worldwide network infrastructure.

• Create software solutions for network provisioning, configuration management, device lifecycle management, validation, monitoring, and automated remediation.

• Design and implement systems that integrate DPUs, SmartNICs, and programmable network infrastructure.

• Develop automation for extensive datacenter and Point of Presence deployments, encompassing hardware, network fabrics, routing infrastructure, and vendor integrations.

• Construct abstractions across various network vendors and hardware implementations while ensuring operational safety and reliability.

• Develop diagnostic tools and automate operational workflows.

• Transform manual, repetitive, or error-prone infrastructure operations into scalable software solutions.

• Collaborate with network engineers and infrastructure architects to convert networking and hardware requirements into maintainable software architectures.

• Set engineering standards and best practices for infrastructure software development, testing, observability, and operational readiness.

• Lead projects from the technical design phase through implementation, deployment, and long-term maintenance.

• Define technical direction and make architectural decisions for network and infrastructure software.

• Draft RFCs, architecture and design documents, technical proposals, project plans, and other project documentation.

• Assess emerging hardware and software technologies for DigitalOcean's infrastructure.

• Utilize AI tools to enhance development, debugging, testing, documentation, and technical exploration while upholding production-quality standards.

• Guide engineers and provide technical leadership throughout the engineering organization.

• Foster partnerships across Network Infrastructure, Compute, Storage, Availability, Security, and Hardware/Platform Engineering.

⛳️ Requirements

• Extensive experience in designing and building production software systems at scale.

• Strong foundation in software engineering, including distributed systems, API design, concurrency, testing, observability, and system reliability.

• Proficient programming skills in one or more languages such as Go, Python, or C++.

• Experience in developing automation, orchestration, or infrastructure platforms.

• Comprehensive understanding of networking concepts, including TCP/IP, BGP, EVPN/VXLAN, VLANs, routing, switching, and network telemetry.

• Familiarity with network devices, network automation frameworks, APIs, or vendor SDKs.

• Experience in designing systems that operate reliably in highly available, production environments.

• Ability to analyze complex infrastructure problems and simplify them into scalable software architectures.

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

• Capability to convert ambiguous issues into clear technical proposals, documented requirements, architectural decisions, and actionable implementation plans.

• Strong communication skills and the ability to sway technical decisions across engineering teams.

• Proven ability to function as a technical leader without depending on organizational authority.

• Experience in one or more of the following areas is particularly advantageous: DPU networking/security/storage/virtualization offload, DPU orchestration/provisioning/lifecycle/configuration systems, programmable data planes, eBPF, P4, or DPU/SmartNIC integration.

• Preferred experience with hyperscale or cloud infrastructure, DPUs/SmartNICs/IPUs, SONiC, white-box networking, 400G+ datacenter networks, OpenConfig, gNMI, NETCONF, YANG, streaming telemetry, Kubernetes, eBPF/P4, or open-source infrastructure projects.

🏝️ Benefits

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

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

• Employee Assistance Program.

• Local Employee Meetups.

• Flexible time-off policy.

• Bonus eligibility based on both company and individual performance.

• Equity compensation, including stock grants upon hiring.

• Employee Stock Purchase Program.

• Competitive benefits tailored to local regulations and preferences.