Principal Forwarding Plane Architect - Cloud Networking

Alkira, Inc.; San Jose (CA); Hybrid; USD 167,000 - 279,000; Full time

Job summary

Alkira, a Lumen company, seeks a Principal Software Engineer, Forwarding Plane to guide architecture and evolution of the cloud networking Forwarding Plane platform. You will build and scale core packet‑processing infrastructure powering Alkira's services.

This hybrid role requires onsite collaboration at our San Jose, CA office 2–3 days per week and leadership across engineering teams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS/CE or related; Master's preferred.
• 12+ years of software engineering with networking focus.
• Expert proficiency in C and Linux kernel internals.
• Experience with high-performance packet-processing software.
• Experience with DPDK, VPP, or similar frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture, design, and long-term roadmap of the Forwarding Plane.
• Define scalable networking architectures for cloud services.
• Drive reliability, scalability, observability, and maintainability.
• Mentor engineers and lead architecture reviews.
• Collaborate with product and security teams on initiatives.

Skills

C programming

Linux

Networking

Packet processing

Kernel internals

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/CE

Master's degree preferred

Tools

DPDK

VPP

AWS

Azure

GCP

Job description

Alkira, a Lumen company, seeks a Principal Software Engineer, Forwarding Plane to guide architecture and evolution of the cloud networking Forwarding Plane platform. You will build and scale core packet‑processing infrastructure powering Alkira's services.

This hybrid role requires onsite collaboration at our San Jose, CA office 2–3 days per week and leadership across engineering teams.