Senior Network Datapath Engineer — Remote

Emploive; Austin, Northern (TX, KY); Hybrid; USD 167,000 - 209,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote role

Equity compensation

Employee Stock Purchase Program

Bonus potential

Job summary

DigitalOcean is seeking a Senior Software Engineer, Network Datapath to design, implement, and optimize high-performance networking software across our cloud infrastructure.

You will work at the intersection of systems software, networking, and performance engineering, delivering scalable datapath solutions, working with DPUs, SmartNICs, and programmable NICs to accelerate cloud networking. Remote-friendly role with competitive compensation.

Qualifications

• Production software in C, C++, or Go.
• Strong networking and packet processing knowledge.
• Experience with Linux-based networking systems.
• Understanding of TCP/IP, routing, NAT, VXLAN, BGP, ECMP.
• Experience with performance debugging and optimization.
• Knowledge of Linux kernel networking internals.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and optimize high-performance network datapath software.
• Build packet-processing and forwarding systems for throughput and latency.
• Develop networking functionality across host, kernel, and user space.
• Work with Linux networking, eBPF, XDP, DPDK, AF_XDP, SR-IOV.
• Analyze packet paths to remove bottlenecks and improve performance.
• Develop routing, filtering, tunneling, and network virtualization.
• Build datapath observability, telemetry, and debugging tools.
• Collaborate with hardware teams to integrate with DPUs/SmartNICs.
• Author RFCs and design docs; mentor engineers.

Skills

C/C++/Go

Networking fundamentals

Linux networking

Performance optimization

Multithreading

Technical writing

Tools

DPDK

XDP

eBPF

AF_XDP

SR-IOV

NIC drivers

Job description

DigitalOcean is seeking a Senior Software Engineer, Network Datapath to design, implement, and optimize high-performance networking software across our cloud infrastructure.

You will work at the intersection of systems software, networking, and performance engineering, delivering scalable datapath solutions, working with DPUs, SmartNICs, and programmable NICs to accelerate cloud networking. Remote-friendly role with competitive compensation.