Senior Software Engineer, Foundational Infrastructure & Networking

Lyft; Toronto; Hybrid; CAD 136,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health and dental coverage

Mental health benefits

RRSP plan with company match

Paid time off

Job summary

Lyft in Toronto is seeking a Senior Software Engineer on the Foundational Infrastructure & Networking team to own core routing, service mesh, and control planes powering millions of rides daily. This IC role emphasizes architecture, performance, and observability, with hands-on debugging and mentorship.

You will design scalable networking systems on AWS with Envoy proxies, Kubernetes clusters, and IaC tooling, collaborating across teams to raise reliability and developer velocity.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of production systems experience.
• Deep understanding of Linux networking, TCP/IP, DNS, gRPC, HTTP/2.
• Experience with large-scale Kubernetes on AWS/GCP.
• Proven ability to troubleshoot distributed systems.
• Expertise in service meshes like Envoy, Istio, or Nginx.

Responsibilities

• Architect and scale core networking and service mesh.
• Optimize high-throughput control planes and load balancing.
• Improve observability with metrics and tracing.
• Lead production debugging of cross-stack incidents.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship.

Skills

Production systems experience

Cloud networking

Service mesh & proxy

Kubernetes / IaC

Distributed systems debugging

Tools

Envoy / proxy tech

Istio / service mesh

Terraform

Kubernetes

AWS networking

Job description

At Lyft, our purpose is to serve and connect. Lyft's Infrastructure organization builds the high-scale foundation that every engineer at Lyft relies on to ship safe, performant, and reliable services.

As a Senior Software Engineer on the Foundational Infrastructure & Networking team , you will own the core routing, service mesh, and control planes that power hundreds of microservices processing millions of rides daily. This is an IC role with massive engineering leverage: your technical architecture, systems design, and performance optimizations will directly amplify the velocity of every software engineer across Lyft while ensuring platform resiliency at scale.

Responsibilities

• Architect & Scale Core Networking: Design, build, and optimize our service mesh, ingress/egress infrastructure, and edge routing capabilities using Envoy Proxy and custom control planes on AWS.
• Optimize High-Throughput Control Planes: Enhance load-balancing algorithms, service discovery, and dynamic scaling mechanisms across high-concurrency data and control planes running on Kubernetes.
• Drive Systems Reliability & Observability: Operationalize deep telemetry, metrics, and distributed tracing across our networking stack to drastically reduce mean-time-to-detect (MTTD) and resolution (MTTR).
• Hands-on Production Debugging: Lead complex technical investigations into cross-stack incidents spanning kernel parameters, cloud VPC network layers, DNS, and distributed microservice protocols.
• Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Elevate engineering rigor through RFC reviews, technical vision, incident response post-mortems, and mentoring engineers across the broader Infrastructure org.

Experience

• 6+ Years of Production Systems Experience: Proven track record building and operating massive-scale cloud infrastructure and networking platforms.
• Expertise in Cloud Networking & Protocols: Deep understanding of Linux networking, TCP/IP, DNS, gRPC, HTTP/2, load balancing, and AWS networking architecture (VPCs, NLBs, subnets, transit gateways).
• Service Mesh & Proxy Expertise: Hands-on experience building or operating large-scale proxy and mesh technologies (e.g., Envoy, Istio, Cilium, Nginx).
• Cloud & Container Infrastructure: Strong experience managing production Kubernetes clusters running on public cloud providers (AWS/GCP) using Infrastructure-as-Code tools (Terraform).
• Distributed Systems Troubleshooting: Demonstrated skill in isolating and debugging complex, multi-layered system failures under high throughput conditions.

Benefits:

• Extended health and dental coverage options, along with life insurance and disability benefits
• Mental health benefits
• Family building benefits
• Child care and pet benefits
• Access to a Lyft funded Health Care Savings Account
• RRSP plan with company match to help save for your future
• In addition to provincial observed holidays, salaried team members are covered under Lyft's flexible paid time off policy. The policy allows team members to take off as much time as they need (with manager approval). Hourly team members get 15 days paid time off, with an additional day for each year of service
• Lyft is proud to support new parents with 18 weeks of paid time off, designed as a top-up plan to complement provincial programs. Biological, adoptive, and foster parents are all eligible.
• Subsidized commuter benefits and Lyft ride credits
• Lyft is committed to creating an inclusive workforce that fosters belonging. Lyft believes that every person has a right to equal employment opportunities without discrimination because of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, pardoned record of offences, or any other basis protected by applicable law or by Company policy. Lyft also strives for a healthy and safe workplace and strictly prohibits harassment of any kind. Accommodation for persons with disabilities will be provided upon request in accordance with applicable law during the application and hiring process. Please contact your recruiter if you wish to make such a request.
• Lyft highly values having employees working in-office to foster a collaborative work environment and company culture. This role will be in-office on a hybrid schedule - Team Members will be expected to work in the office at least 3 days per week, including on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Lyft considers working in the office at least 3 days per week to be an essential function of this hybrid role. Your recruiter can share more information about the various in-office perks Lyft offers. Additionally, hybrid roles have the flexibility to work from anywhere for up to 4 weeks per year. #Hybrid
• The expected base pay range for this position in the Toronto area is CAD $136,000 - CAD $170,000, not inclusive of potential equity offering, bonus or benefits. Salary ranges are dependent on a variety of factors, incl