Senior System Software Engineer, Software-Defined Networking

NVIDIA Corporation; California (MO); Hybrid; USD 224,000 - 357,000; Full time

Job summary

NVIDIA Corporation is seeking a Senior System Software Engineer (SDN) to advance software-defined networking for global GPU cloud infrastructure. Build and operate secure, programmable cloud networking using Open vSwitch, OVN, Kubernetes, C, and Go.

Collaborate with engineers to lead architecture, implementation, and production improvements. You’ll drive multi-tenant control-plane/data-plane design and production-grade networking software, with on-call responsibility and strong focus on

Qualifications

• BS or MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 12+ years of proven experience designing, implementing, testing, and maintaining production software in both C and Go, with Bash and Python used for test, diagnostic, build, or operational automation.
• Concrete experience developing, integrating, and solving issues in Open vSwitch and OVN, including OpenFlow and control-plane-to-data-plane behavior.
• Production Kubernetes networking experience, including container network interfaces, network policy, node and pod traffic paths, network-plugins, upgrades, and failure modes.
• Strong Linux networking fundamentals and practical understanding of IP, TCP, UDP, routing, switching, overlay networks, tunneling, network namespaces, and network policy.
• Experience architecting distributed systems with secure service APIs, state management, consistency, scalability, compatibility, and failure handling.
• Experience handling the production lifecycle through automated testing, CI/CD, deployments, upgrades, observability, and performance analysis.
• Experience supporting production services through a shared on-call rotation and coordinating incident response through evidence from flows, logs, metrics, traces, profiles, experiments, and source-level debugging.
• Collaborative architecture and technical leadership through written designs, consequential decisions, cross-team work, critical reviews, mentoring, and delivery of significant systems through production operation.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with engineers and architects to define, review, and evolve multi-tenant control-plane and data-plane architecture using Open vSwitch, OVN, OpenFlow, and overlay network technologies.
• Demonstrate technical leadership and mentorship through design and code reviews, implementation guidance, production-readiness decisions, and improvements to engineering quality.
• Develop and review production software for Kubernetes networking, network plugins, distributed control planes, Linux host networking, virtual-machine networking, and network automation.
• Translate product and infrastructure requirements into secure orchestration services, APIs, component boundaries, state models, compatibility strategies, and delivery plans while driving shared decisions.
• Drive Open vSwitch and OVN integration across flow behavior, configuration, lifecycle management, upgrades, interoperability, performance, failure recovery, and large-scale production operation.
• Build and implement automated unit, integration, system, performance, scale, and upgrade tests connected to continuous integration, deployment, and release-qualification workflows.
• Share the team’s on-call rotation and lead networking escalations with partner teams.
• Use packet captures, SDN state, telemetry, profiling, controlled experiments, and source debugging to resolve incidents and prevent recurrence.

Skills

C

Go

Python

Bash

Open vSwitch

OVN

Kubernetes

Linux networking

OpenFlow

Distributed systems

Education

BS or MS in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Open vSwitch

OVN

Kubernetes

Job description

Within the NVIDIA Gaming Network (NGN) infrastructure/storage group, the NGN Software-Defined Storage (SDS) team focuses on storage and infrastructure software for NGN/GeForce NOW, with work spanning NGN 2.x Kubernetes, block storage, performance/scale, security, tenant storage, tenant gameseat, and related central NGN services. NVIDIA is looking for a Senior System Software Engineer (SDN) to advance software-defined networking for global GPU cloud infrastructure that enables AI workloads, cloud gaming, content delivery, and other accelerated services. Build and operate secure, programmable cloud networking using Open vSwitch, OVN, Kubernetes, C, and Go. Collaborate with senior engineers, NVIDIA architects, and partner teams to lead architecture, implementation, qualification, issue response, and production improvements.

What you’ll be doing:

Collaborate with engineers and architects to define, review, and evolve multi-tenant control-plane and data-plane architecture using Open vSwitch, OVN, OpenFlow, and overlay network technologies.

Demonstrate technical leadership and mentorship through design and code reviews, implementation guidance, production-readiness decisions, and improvements to engineering quality.

Develop and review production software for Kubernetes networking, network plugins, distributed control planes, Linux host networking, virtual-machine networking, and network automation. Translate product and infrastructure requirements into secure orchestration services, APIs, component boundaries, state models, compatibility strategies, and delivery plans while driving shared decisions.

Drive Open vSwitch and OVN integration across flow behavior, configuration, lifecycle management, upgrades, interoperability, performance, failure recovery, and large-scale production operation.

Build and implement automated unit, integration, system, performance, scale, and upgrade tests connected to continuous integration, deployment, and release-qualification workflows. Share the team’s on-call rotation and lead networking escalations with partner teams.

Use packet captures, SDN state, telemetry, profiling, controlled experiments, and source debugging to resolve incidents and prevent recurrence. Define and improve reliability, performance, security, and resource-efficiency objectives while engineering actionable monitoring, telemetry, tracing, and service-level visibility for production networks.

What we need to see:

BS or MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.

12+ years of proven experience designing, implementing, testing, and maintaining production software in both C and Go, with Bash and Python used for test, diagnostic, build, or operational automation.

Concrete experience developing, integrating, and solving issues in Open vSwitch and OVN, including OpenFlow and control-plane-to-data-plane behavior.

Production Kubernetes networking experience, including container network interfaces, network policy, node and pod traffic paths, network-plugins, upgrades, and failure modes.

Strong Linux networking fundamentals and practical understanding of IP, TCP, UDP, routing, switching, overlay networks, tunneling, network namespaces, and network policy.

Experience architecting distributed systems with secure service APIs, state management, consistency, scalability, compatibility, and failure handling.

Experience handling the production lifecycle through automated testing, CI/CD, deployments, upgrades, observability, and performance analysis.

Experience supporting production services through a shared on-call rotation and coordinating incident response through evidence from flows, logs, metrics, traces, profiles, experiments, and source-level debugging.

Collaborative architecture and technical leadership through written designs, consequential decisions, cross-team work, critical reviews, mentoring, and delivery of significant systems through production operation.

Ways to stand out from the crowd:

Contributions to Open vSwitch, OVN, OVN-Kubernetes, Kubernetes networking, or another relevant open-source project.

Experience with large-scale cloud and accelerated virtualization systems, including SR-IOV, RDMA, SmartNICs, data processing units, network function virtualization, KVM/QEMU, or container runtimes.

Experience building secure, high-performance gRPC or REST services using transport security and strong authentication.

Applied use of agentic AI and AI-assisted software-development tooling, including coding agents, reusable skills, or Model Context Protocol integrations.

With competitive salaries and a generous benefits package, NVIDIA is widely considered to be one of the technology industry's most desirable employers. We work with some of the most forward-thinking, versatile people in the world, and our engineering teams are growing fast in some of the most impactful fields of our generation: Cloud Gaming, Cloud Streaming, Network Site Reliability/.

Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and the pay of employees in similar positions. The base salary range is 224,000 USD - 356,500 USD. You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.

Applications for this job will be accepted at least until September 17, 2026.

This posting is for an existing vacancy.

NVIDIA uses AI tools in its recruiting processes.

NVIDIA is committed to fostering an inclusive work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer.

As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.

NVIDIA pioneered accelerated computing. Today, our AI infrastructure powers global intelligence, transforming every industry.