Senior Software Engineer – Network Observability

Linuxconfig; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Competitive compensation

Catered lunch

Job summary

Clockwork Systems is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to contribute to the architecture and scaling of a high-performance network monitoring and observability platform. You will build systems that provide visibility into RDMA, RoCE, InfiniBand, and TCP/IP networks, and collaborate across teams.

The role emphasizes distributed systems, Linux networking, and modern observability stacks like Grafana/Prometheus, with a focus on low-latency data paths and scalable telemetry.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related technical field.
• Strong hands-on programming experience in C++, Go, Python, Rust, or similar systems programming languages.
• Proven experience delivering complex infrastructure projects and distributed systems design.
• Experience building distributed systems, backend services, telemetry pipelines, or observability platforms.
• Hands-on experience with RDMA, RoCE, InfiniBand, or other high-performance network fabrics.
• Familiarity with libibverbs, RDMA verbs, RDMA CM, queue pairs, completion queues, memory registration.
• Strong knowledge of Linux networking, TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, routing, MTU, congestion control, and performance tuning.
• Experience with traceroute-style diagnostics, path discovery, network reachability checks, synthetic probes, or active measurements.
• Experience with monitoring/visualization platforms such as Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, Splunk, OpenTelemetry.
• Strong debugging skills across software, OS, server, and network layers.
• Experience operating production systems in Linux-based environments.
• Strong technical judgment and ability to build reliable, scalable systems.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and scale high-performance network monitoring platforms for RDMA, RoCE, InfiniBand, and TCP/IP infrastructure.
• Build backend telemetry services, observability dashboards, alerts, diagnostics, anomaly detection, SLA monitoring, and traffic analysis workflows.
• Troubleshoot complex production issues across application, OS, server, RDMA, and network layers while optimizing low-latency collection, aggregation, and alerting.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver scalable solutions, improve engineering practices, automate operational workflows, and contribute to the platform's technical direction.

Skills

C++

Go

Python

Rust

Distributed systems

Linux networking

Prometheus

Grafana

Datadog

OpenTelemetry

Debugging

Production Linux

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS/CE/EE

Tools

Prometheus

Grafana

Datadog

OpenTelemetry

Splunk

Kubernetes

ethtool

tcpdump

Wireshark

rdma-core

Job description

Senior Software Engineer – Network Observability

About Clockwork Systems

Clockwork.io – Software Driven Fabrics to increase GPU cluster utilization

Clockwork Systems was founded by Stanford researchers and veteran systems engineers who share a vision for redefining the foundations of distributed computing. As AI workloads grow increasingly complex, traditional infrastructure struggles to meet the demands of performance, reliability, and precise coordination. Clockwork is pioneering a software-driven approach to AI fabrics by delivering cross-stack observability to catch and quickly resolve problems, workload fault tolerance to keep jobs running through failures, and performance acceleration that dynamically routes and paces traffic to avoid congestion.

We are seeking an experienced Senior Software Engineer to contribute to the architecture, development, and scaling of a high-performance network monitoring and observability platform. This role will focus on building systems that provide deep visibility into RDMA, RoCE, InfiniBand, and TCP/IP networks. The ideal candidate has strong experience in distributed systems, Linux networking, and modern observability stacks (e.g., Grafana/Prometheus).

What You Will Do

• Design, develop, and scale high-performance network monitoring platforms for RDMA, RoCE, InfiniBand, and TCP/IP infrastructure.
• Build backend telemetry services, observability dashboards, alerts, diagnostics, anomaly detection, SLA monitoring, and traffic analysis workflows.
• Troubleshoot complex production issues across application, OS, server, RDMA, and network layers while optimizing low-latency collection, aggregation, and alerting.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver scalable solutions, improve engineering practices, automate operational workflows, and contribute to the technical direction of the platform.

What We’re Looking For

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Strong hands-on programming experience in C++, Go, Python, Rust, or similar systems programming languages.
• Proven experience delivering complex infrastructure projects and contributing to the design and implementation of distributed systems.
• Experience building distributed systems, backend services, telemetry pipelines, or observability platforms.
• Hands-on experience with RDMA, RoCE, InfiniBand, or other high-performance network fabrics.
• Familiarity with libibverbs, RDMA verbs, RDMA CM, queue pairs, completion queues, memory registration, and related RDMA concepts.
• Strong knowledge of Linux networking, TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, routing, MTU, congestion control, packet loss, latency, and performance tuning.
• Experience with traceroute-style diagnostics, path discovery, network reachability checks, synthetic probes, or active network measurements.
• Experience with monitoring and visualization platforms such as Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, Splunk, OpenTelemetry, or similar tools.
• Strong debugging skills across software, operating system, server, and network layers.
• Experience operating production systems in Linux-based environments.
• Strong technical judgment and ability to build reliable, scalable, and maintainable systems.

Nice to Have

• Experience supporting AI/ML, HPC, storage, or GPU cluster infrastructure workloads.
• Experience with large-scale RoCE or InfiniBand deployments.
• Experience with NCCL, distributed training infrastructure, or AI cluster diagnostics.
• Experience with eBPF, XDP, DPDK, perf, tcpdump, Wireshark, ethtool, iproute2, rdma-core, or Linux kernel networking tools.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure on AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Experience with Kubernetes, service discovery, configuration management, and infrastructure automation.
• Knowledge of security, compliance, and infrastructure best practices.
• Experience designing time-series data systems, alerting pipelines, or high-cardinality telemetry platforms.
• A friendly and inclusive workplace culture.
• Competitive compensation.
• A great benefits package.
• Catered lunch.

Compensation for this position will vary based on the skills and experience you bring, as well as internal equity considerations. For candidates hired at the posted level, the expected base salary range is $140,000 - $210,000.The offered compensation package may also include stock options or other equity awards, subject to Clockwork’s equity program and applicable approvals.
In addition to cash compensation, this role is eligible to participate in the company’s equity program, which may include stock options granted in accordance with the company’s equity plan and subject to approval and applicable vesting schedules.

Clockwork Systems is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building world-class teams by welcoming bright, passionate individuals from all backgrounds. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ancestry, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status. We believe diversity drives innovation, and we grow stronger together.