Principal Data Plane Engineer — High-Performance Networking

Socket.dev; Durham (NC); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Xsight Labs is seeking a Principal Dataplane Engineer to lead a strategic networking initiative. You will design, implement, and optimize dataplane software interfacing with custom hardware pipelines to enable line-rate packet processing and scalable cloud networking.

Collaborate with silicon architects, firmware, and control-plane teams, and engage with the open-source community to shape dataplane models, APIs, and performance frameworks.

Qualifications

• Strong understanding of dataplane architectures and high-performance packet processing.
• Experience developing Linux-based dataplane software for embedded or server-class CPUs (x86 and/or ARM).
• Designing low-latency, high-throughput systems with strict performance constraints.
• Translate hardware specs and networking requirements into efficient dataplane implementations.
• Experience profiling, debugging, and optimizing dataplane code across CPU, memory, and I/O subsystems.
• Collaborate closely with hardware, firmware, and control-plane teams.
• Hands-on experience with DPDK, including PMDs, RTE Flow, and performance tuning.
• Familiarity with NIC offloads, hardware accelerators, or programmable packet processing pipelines.
• Knowledge of L2/L3 forwarding, encapsulation, and tunneling protocols (Ethernet, VLAN, VXLAN, IP, TCP/UDP).
• Experience with highly available and scalable networking systems.
• Exposure to hardware/software co-simulation, emulation, or FPGA-based validation environments.
• Prior or active contributions to open source dataplane or networking projects.
• Expert-level proficiency in C
• Performance-driven, detail-oriented engineering mindset
• Strong problem-solving and debugging skills
• Self-learner with the ability to ramp quickly on new hardware and architectures
• Team-player with excellent verbal and written communication skills

Skills

Dataplane design

Linux development

DPDK

C programming

Performance tuning

Debugging

Open source

Team communication

Tools

DPDK PMDs

RTE Flow

NIC offloads

FPGA validation

Job description

Xsight Labs is seeking a Principal Dataplane Engineer to lead a strategic networking initiative. You will design, implement, and optimize dataplane software interfacing with custom hardware pipelines to enable line-rate packet processing and scalable cloud networking.

Collaborate with silicon architects, firmware, and control-plane teams, and engage with the open-source community to shape dataplane models, APIs, and performance frameworks.