Staff Infrastructure Design Engineer

Linuxcareers; Seattle, Northern (WA, KY); Hybrid; USD 195,000 - 239,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus program

Equity compensation

ESPP participation

Job summary

DigitalOcean is seeking a Staff Infrastructure Design Engineer to lead hardware design and automation across its data center infrastructure. You will drive projects from requirements to deployment, collaborating with vendors and internal teams to deliver scalable, reliable hardware platforms.

You will optimize firmware and automation, participate in on-call rotations, and mentor peers while shaping a roadmap that aligns with DigitalOcean's mission and growth.

Qualifications

• BS in Computer Science or Engineering or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong understanding of x86 server hardware and subsystems.
• Experience designing, implementing, and maintaining liquid-cooled server solutions in data center environments.
• Proficiency in configuration management best practices (Ansible and Chef) and automation tooling (Redfish/IPMI).
• Linux/Unix proficiency with Git and programming (Python or Go).

Responsibilities

• Lead projects with internal stakeholders to gather product requirements for hardware designs aligned with DigitalOcean's mission.
• Work with vendors on specifying, qualifying, onboarding, and delivering new hardware to the ecosystem.
• Develop and execute a hardware development roadmap supporting product requirements.
• Improve firmware and hardware configuration automation and validation for platforms and components such as NIC, storage, and BMC.
• Serve as Tier 3 escalation for triage, investigation, and resolution of system hardware issues in the fleet.
• Participate in 24/7 on-call rotation and mentor other engineers on configuration management and hardware design

Skills

X86 server hardware

Liquid-cooled servers

Ansible and Chef

Redfish and IPMI

Linux/Unix, Git, Python or Go

Education

BS in Computer Science or Engineering

Tools

IPMI

Git

PXE/UEFI

Job description

DigitalOcean is seeking a Staff Infrastructure Design Engineer to lead hardware design and automation across its data center infrastructure. This role focuses on optimizing and troubleshooting data center hardware at scale, designing new hardware platforms, and building automation tools to support DigitalOcean's growing infrastructure footprint.

What You'll Do

• Lead projects with internal stakeholders to gather product requirements for hardware designs aligned with DigitalOcean's mission
• Work with vendors on specifying, qualifying, onboarding, and delivering new hardware to the ecosystem
• Develop and execute a hardware development roadmap supporting product requirements
• Improve firmware and hardware configuration automation and validation for platforms and components such as NIC, storage, and BMC
• Serve as Tier 3 escalation for triage, investigation, and resolution of system hardware issues in the fleet
• Participate in 24/7 on-call rotation and mentor other engineers on configuration management and hardware design

What You Need

• Technical degree (BS Computer Science/Engineering) or equivalent practical experience
• Strong understanding of x86 server hardware architecture and subsystems
• Hands-on experience designing, implementing, and maintaining liquid-cooled server solutions in data center environments
• Professional proficiency in configuration management best practices (Ansible and Chef)
• Experience automating server components at large-scale using industry-standard tooling (Redfish, IPMI)
• Practical knowledge of PXE boot, UEFI, Linux/OS boot, BIOS distributions, OpenBMC implementations, RAID, and network stack
• Adept at Linux or Unix operating systems with comfort using version control (Git) and proficiency in programming (Python or Go)
• Ability to participate in 24/7 on-call rotation

Nice to Have

• Experience working with non-x86 hardware architectures
• Deep understanding of benchmarking and automated test frameworks

$195,000-$239,000 base salary, eligible for bonus based on company and individual performance, equity compensation including grants upon hire and ESPP participation