Senior Software Engineer II, Network Datapath

digitalocean98; United States; Remote; USD 167,000 - 209,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote role

Bonus potential

Equity

Job summary

digitalocean98 is seeking a senior network datapath engineer to design and optimize high-performance datapath software for a multi-region cloud. You will work across host, kernel, user space, and hardware interfaces and collaborate with infrastructure, compute and hardware teams.

The role emphasizes packet processing, routing, acceleration, observability, and close integration with host and hardware networking components. You will mentor engineers and contribute to architecture documentation.

Qualifications

• Proven production software experience in C/C++/Go for high-performance networking.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and optimize high-performance datapath software for a multi-region cloud network.
• Build and refine packet processing and forwarding systems emphasizing throughput, latency, CPU efficiency, scalability, and reliability.
• Develop networking functionality spanning host, kernel, user space, and hardware-accelerated datapaths.
• Investigate packet processing paths, eliminate bottlenecks, and tune performance characteristics.
• Build software for routing, filtering, encapsulation, tunneling, load balancing, traffic steering, and network virtualization.
• Improve datapath observability, telemetry, debugging, and monitoring, and integrate with DPUs, SmartNICs, and programmable NICs.
• Create automated testing and benchmarking frameworks and lead investigation of complex production networking issues.
• Author RFCs, architecture documents, and technical proposals, and mentor other engineers.

Skills

C

C++

Go

Linux networking

DPDK/XDP/eBPF

Multithreaded systems

Job description

Role overview

Work at the intersection of networking, operating systems, and high-performance software as a senior engineer on the network datapath powering a large public cloud. The role focuses on packet processing, forwarding, routing, acceleration, observability, and tight integration with host and hardware networking components, partnering with infrastructure, compute, and hardware teams across the company.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and optimize high-performance datapath software for a multi-region cloud network.
• Build and refine packet processing and forwarding systems emphasizing throughput, latency, CPU efficiency, scalability, and reliability.
• Develop networking functionality spanning host, kernel, user space, and hardware-accelerated datapaths.
• Investigate packet processing paths, eliminate bottlenecks, and tune performance characteristics.
• Build software for routing, filtering, encapsulation, tunneling, load balancing, traffic steering, and network virtualization.
• Improve datapath observability, telemetry, debugging, and monitoring, and integrate with DPUs, SmartNICs, and programmable NICs.
• Create automated testing and benchmarking frameworks and lead investigation of complex production networking issues.
• Author RFCs, architecture documents, and technical proposals, and mentor other engineers.

Requirements

• Strong experience designing and developing production software in C, C++, or Go.
• Deep understanding of networking and packet processing on Linux-based systems.
• Solid grasp of TCP/IP, routing, switching, VLANs, VXLAN, BGP, ECMP, NAT, load balancing, and network virtualization.
• Experience debugging and optimizing performance-sensitive, multithreaded, and concurrent systems.
• Familiarity with Linux networking internals, the kernel stack, namespaces, sockets, queues, interrupts, and NIC drivers.
• Hands-on experience with one or more of DPDK, XDP, eBPF, AF_XDP, or SR-IOV, plus strong technical communication and documentation skills.

Benefits and work setup

• Remote role with a base salary range of $167,200 to $209,000, plus potential bonus and equity.
• Conference and training reimbursement, broad online learning access, and flexible time off.