Senior DNS Infrastructure Engineer

Hub; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Cash compensation

Equity

Local benefits

Remote-friendly setup

Job summary

Verda is seeking a Principal DNS Infrastructure Engineer to own our DNS ecosystem. You will advance a PowerDNS-based platform to scale, automate, and remain resilient across regions.

As part of a move-fast culture, you will implement API-driven DNS, subdomain delegation, and anycast architecture, while documenting runbooks for SRE and platform teams.

Qualifications

• Proven experience with PowerDNS at large scale.
• In-depth DNS internals knowledge (DNSSEC, TSIG, EDNS).
• Experience with DNS routing and Anycast architectures.
• Infrastructure as code mindset using SaltStack or Ansible.
• Ability to explain complex DNS concepts clearly to teams.

Responsibilities

• Own DNS architecture and scale globally.
• Leverage dnsdist for load balancing and DoS mitigation.
• Automate DNS management with GitOps via SaltStack/Ansible.
• Design subdomain delegation and multi-tenancy routing.
• Architect Anycast DNS with BGP for a global footprint.
• Document pipelines and runbooks for SRE and platform teams.

Skills

PowerDNS

DNS architecture

SaltStack

Ansible

GitOps

BGP/Anycast

Tools

dnsdist

MySQL

PostgreSQL

Job description

At Verda, we're building a full-stack AI cloud, covering everything from data centers and hardware to our own cloud platform that the world's leading AI teams use to do serious AI work. We strive to make a positive mark on the world through the infrastructure we build and give leading teams a service they can truly depend on. Headquartered in Helsinki, we operate globally with offices in London and San Francisco. Join Verda while it’s still being built - not once it’s finished.

Why Verda

• Cash and equity compensation along with local benefits.

• 40+ nationalities, with 6 different ones on the management team.

• A real chance to make an impact and work alongside world class engineers, researchers, and partners across the global AI ecosystem.

About the role

We are looking for a Principal DNS Infrastructure Engineer to completely own our DNS ecosystem. You will inherit a platform built on PowerDNS and take it to the next level of massive scale, resilience, and automation. In our "move fast" culture, your goal is to build an API-driven, bulletproof DNS architecture where zone provisioning, subdomain delegation, and record updates happen instantly and programmatically via code, removing all human bottlenecks.

Your Responsibilities

• Absolute Ownership of DNS Architecture: Shape, scale, and maintain our global PowerDNS authoritative and recursive infrastructure.

• Massive Scale Engineering: Leverage dnsdist for intelligent load balancing, query filtering, and denial-of-service mitigation to keep our DNS layer highly available under extreme loads.

• Automate Everything: Use SaltStack and Ansible to drive a strict GitOps model for DNS. Every zone, record type, and configuration change must be managed as code.

• Master Subdomain & Multi-Tenancy Routing: Design clean, automated architectures for dynamic subdomain delegation and tenant isolation, ensuring cloud customers can programmatically spin up and tear down records safely.

• Architect Anycast DNS: Partner with our networking team to scale our DNS footprint globally using BGP Anycast, ensuring ultra-low latency and seamless failover across deployment regions.

• Collaborate & Communicate: Act as the organization's resident DNS evangelist. Write crystal-clear internal documentation and runbooks, ensuring our core SRE and platform teams understand how to interface with your DNS pipelines without fear.

Your Key Requirements

• Deep PowerDNS Mastery: Proven experience architecting, tuning, and operating PowerDNS components (Authoritative, Recursor, and dnsdist) at massive scale.

• Expertise in DNS Mechanics: In-depth knowledge of DNS internals (TSIG, DNSSEC automation, EDNS, SOA timers, and query/response optimization).

• Scale & Routing Fundamentals: Solid understanding of how DNS scales using database backends (MySQL/PostgreSQL) and how routing protocols like BGP/Anycast distribute query loads globally.

• Automation-First Mindset: 5+ years of experience managing infrastructure via configuration management (SaltStack or Ansible) and treating infrastructure strictly as code.

• Clear, Collaborative Communicator: The ability to explain complex DNS routing, delegation anomalies, or propagation delays to external teams and leadership with absolute clarity.

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience writing custom Lua scripts for advanced traffic management or security filtering inside dnsdist.

• Active contributor to the open-source PowerDNS community or related internet infrastructure working groups (IETF/DNSOP).

• Experience implementing modern privacy/security protocols at scale, such as DNS-over-TLS (DoT) or DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH).

Practicalities

• Work mode: Remote (EU)

• Employment type: Full-time, permanent

• Start date: As soon as possible

What's next

We’re building fast and this role needs the right person behind it. There’s no artificial deadline, but when we find who we’re looking for, we move.