Fellow, Software Engineering- Infrastructure

LinkedIn; Mountain View (CA); Hybrid; USD 335,000 - 548,000; Full time

Job summary

LinkedIn is seeking a high-level technical leader to guide its Infrastructure group as a Fellow. The role spans the full stack from physical resources to AI platforms, influencing the company’s architecture and investment choices at scale.

The Fellow will set strategy, drive AI-native infrastructure initiatives, mentor senior engineers, and collaborate with executives to align technology with business goals and operational excellence. Hybrid work is available.

Qualifications

• Master’s or PhD in CS/EE or related field, or equivalent exceptional experience.
• 20+ years of software engineering experience with a focus on infrastructure and distributed systems.

Responsibilities

• Define and champion the long-term technical vision for LinkedIn’s Infrastructure organization.
• Drive architectural decisions across compute, storage, networking, data pipelines, online serving, and AI infrastructure.
• Elevate engineering practices and standards across LinkedIn.
• Improve developer productivity and enable faster, more reliable software delivery at scale.
• Lead infrastructure modernization and AI transformation initiatives.

Skills

Distributed Systems Architecture

Developer Productivity

Full-Stack Infrastructure Leadership

AI-Native Infrastructure

Industry Thought Leadership

Open Source Leadership

Data Infrastructure and Platforms

Reliability Engineering at Scale

Operational Excellence and Efficiency

Education

Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field

Tools

Kubernetes

Envoy

Kafka

Open Source Tools

Job description

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network, built to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Our products help people make powerful connections, discover exciting opportunities, build necessary skills, and gain valuable insights every day. We’re also committed to providing transformational opportunities for our own employees by investing in their growth. We aspire to create a culture that’s built on trust, care, inclusion, and fun – where everyone can succeed.

Join us to transform the way the world works.

Job Description

At LinkedIn, our approach to flexible work is centered on trust and optimized for culture, connection, clarity, and the evolving needs of our business. The work location of this role is hybrid, meaning it will be performed both from home and from a LinkedIn office on select days, as determined by the business needs of the team.

LinkedIn is seeking a Fellow to provide the highest level of technical leadership for the Infrastructure organization. Fellows at LinkedIn represent the pinnacle of the individual contributor track — deeply technical visionaries who define the future of their discipline, shape the direction of the company, and drive innovation that influences the broader industry. As a Fellow in Infrastructure, you will set the long-term technical agenda across the full stack of systems that power LinkedIn — from physical and compute foundations through distributed services, data platforms, online applications, and AI infrastructure — serving over one billion members globally. You will be one of the most senior technical voices in an organization spanning all layers of the Infra stack (Physical Infra, Core Infra, Data Infra, Online Infra, AI Infra, and Reliability Infra), and will have company-wide influence on how LinkedIn builds, operates, and evolves its infrastructure for the next decade. In this role, you will lead advancements in distributed systems, AI-first development, and developer productivity, while serving as the technical authority for LinkedIn’s private cloud infrastructure — driving efficiency, agility, and cost attribution at company scale.

Responsibilities

• Define and champion the long-term technical vision and strategy for LinkedIn’s Infrastructure organization as a whole, influencing the direction of LinkedIn’s entire engineering platform
• Identify and solve the most complex and consequential technical challenges across the infrastructure stack — spanning compute, storage, networking, data pipelines, online serving, and AI infrastructure — at LinkedIn scale, setting a new bar for what is possible
• Drive company-wide architectural decisions spanning service delivery, distributed databases, caching, data processing, AI training and serving infrastructure, and reliability systems, ensuring alignment with LinkedIn’s multi-year technology roadmap
• Establish the technical standards, design principles, and engineering culture that guide the Infrastructure organization and elevate engineering practices across LinkedIn broadly
• Drive advancements in developer productivity — shaping the tools, frameworks, and engineering practices that enable LinkedIn’s thousands of engineers to build, iterate, and ship software faster and more reliably
• Lead infrastructure initiatives to increase efficiency, fungibility, and agility at hyperscale
• Lead LinkedIn’s infrastructure transformation toward AI-native paradigms — evaluating and adopting transformative technologies that position LinkedIn’s Infrastructure as an industry leader in building and operating AI-first infrastructure at scale
• Collaborate with Distinguished Engineers, Principal Staff Engineers, and executive leadership to align technical direction with business strategy and LinkedIn’s infrastructure priorities including Operational Excellence, Modernization, and Efficiency
• Advise LinkedIn executives on a broad range of technology, strategy, and operational decisions associated with infrastructure at global scale
• Serve as a trusted advisor and mentor to the most senior technical talent across the organization, elevating the engineering bar company-wide
• Represent LinkedIn externally as a preeminent thought leader — publishing research, presenting at top-tier conferences, contributing to landmark open-source projects, and engaging with the academic and industry communities
• Drive cross-company initiatives that deliver lasting improvements to the reliability, scalability, efficiency, and performance of LinkedIn’s infrastructure — spanning online availability, data integrity, compute utilization, and AI platform readiness
• Anticipate and shape the evolution of infrastructure paradigms — including AI-driven operations, autonomous systems, and next-generation compute — that will define the industry over the next decade

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications

• Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent exceptional research or industry experience
• 20+ years of experience in software engineering with a sustained focus on infrastructure, distributed systems, Storage, databases, or related areas

Preferred Qualifications

• Exceptional breadth and depth of expertise spanning multiple infrastructure domains — including distributed systems, service delivery, compute and storage infrastructure, data platforms, online databases, caching, and AI/ML infrastructure — at scale
• History of defining technical direction for large engineering organizations and influencing industry practices
• Demonstrated ability to anticipate multi-year technical challenges and architect transformative solutions
• Recognized technical authority with a track record of company-wide or industry-wide impact
• Industry recognition through seminal publications, patents, major open-source contributions, or conference keynotes
• Proven ability to mentor and elevate Distinguished Engineers and Principal Staff Engineers
• Strong record of translating deep technical vision into platform and business outcomes at company scale
• Experience leading infrastructure modernization and AI transformation initiatives at large scale
• Experience driving developer productivity at scale — including tooling, frameworks, and platform investments that measurably improve how engineers build, test, and deploy software across a large engineering organization
• Deep experience driving infrastructure efficiency, fungibility, and agility at hyperscale — including capacity planning, cost attribution, and compute optimization across large-scale infrastructure environments
• Familiarity with the full infrastructure stack: physical and hardware infrastructure, compute orchestration, networking, storage, data processing pipelines, online serving systems, and AI/ML platforms
• Experience working across open-source communities to participate in and influence cutting-edge projects relevant to infrastructure (e.g. Kubernetes, Envoy, Kafka, or equivalent)
• Experience leading high-impact, cross-company initiatives

Suggested Skills

• Distributed Systems Architecture
• Developer Productivity
• Full-Stack Infrastructure Leadership
• AI-Native Infrastructure
• Industry Thought Leadership
• Open Source Leadership
• Data Infrastructure and Platforms
• Reliability Engineering at Scale
• Operational Excellence and Efficiency

You will Benefit from our Culture:

We strongly believe in the well-being of our employees and their families. That is why we offer generous health and wellness programs and time away for employees of all- levels. LinkedIn is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. The pay range for this role is $335,000 to $548,000. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, depth of experience, certifications, and specific work location. This may be different in other locations due to differences in the cost of labor. The total compensation package for this position may also include annual performance bonus, stock, benefits and/or other applicable incentive compensation plans. For more information, visit https://careers.linkedin.com/benefits.

Additional Information

Equal Opportunity Statement

We seek candidates with a wide range of perspectives and backgrounds and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. LinkedIn considers qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other legally protected class.

LinkedIn is committed to offering an inclusive and accessible experience for all job seekers, including individuals with disabilities. Our goal is to foster an inclusive and accessible workplace where everyone has the opportunity to be successful.

If you need a reasonable accommodation to search for a job opening, apply for a position, or participate in the interview process, connect with us at [e-mail] and describe the specific accommodation requested for a disability-related limitation.

Reasonable accommodations are modifications or adjustments to the application or hiring process that would enable you to fully participate in that process. Examples of reasonable accommodations include but are not limited to:

• Documents in alternate formats or read aloud to you
• Having interviews in an accessible location
• Being accompanied by a service dog
• Having a sign language interpreter present for the interview

A request for an accommodation will be responded to within three business days. However, non-disability related requests, such as following up on an application, will not receive a response.

San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, LinkedIn will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Pay Transparency Policy Statement

As a federal contractor, LinkedIn follows the Pay Transparency and non-discrimination provisions described at this link: https://lnkd.in/paytransparency.

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Please follow this link to access the document that provides transparency around the way in which LinkedIn handles personal data of employees and job applicants: https://legal.linkedin.com/candidate-portal.