Senior Software Engineer II, Network Datapath

Role overview

A senior engineering position focused on building and evolving the high-performance networking software that powers a large-scale cloud infrastructure. The work sits at the intersection of networking, operating systems, distributed systems, and performance engineering, with responsibility for packet processing, forwarding, routing, acceleration, and integration with hardware offload components. The role partners closely with network infrastructure, compute, availability, and hardware teams to design, optimize, and operate production networking systems.

Responsibilities

- Design, develop, and optimize high-performance network datapath software with a focus on throughput, latency, CPU efficiency, scalability, and reliability - Build packet-processing and forwarding systems using Linux networking, eBPF, XDP, DPDK, AF_XDP, SR-IOV, and programmable datapaths - Develop functionality for routing, packet filtering, encapsulation, tunneling, load balancing, traffic steering, and network virtualization - Build and improve datapath observability, telemetry, debugging, and performance monitoring tooling - Create automated testing and benchmarking frameworks to validate correctness and performance at scale - Investigate complex production issues including packet drops, latency spikes, throughput degradation, and unexpected traffic behavior - Author RFCs, architecture documents, technical proposals, and design documents, and provide mentorship across the engineering organization

Requirements

- Strong production experience developing software in C, C++, or Go - Deep understanding of networking concepts including TCP/IP, routing, switching, VLANs, VXLAN, BGP, ECMP, NAT, load balancing, and network virtualization - Hands-on experience with Linux networking internals, including the kernel networking stack, namespaces, sockets, queues, interrupts, and NIC drivers - Practical experience with one or more high-performance datapath technologies such as DPDK, XDP, eBPF, AF_XDP, or SR-IOV - Strong skills in performance analysis, profiling, benchmarking, and troubleshooting concurrent and multithreaded systems - Ability to drive complex projects independently from technical design through implementation and production deployment - Strong technical writing and communication skills for design reviews, RFCs, and cross-team collaboration

Benefits and work setup

- Hybrid work arrangement - Annual salary range of $167,200 to $209,000, with eligibility for a performance-based bonus - Equity compensation including initial equity grants and an employee stock purchase program - Reimbursement for relevant conferences, training, and continuing education - Access to a large library of on-demand professional development courses - Employee assistance program, flexible time off policy, and benefits tailored to local regulations