Senior Software Engineer II, Network Datapath DigitalOcean · Denver, CO · On-site

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Digital Ocean is looking for a Senior Software Engineer, Network Datapath to help build and evolve the software that powers high-performance networking across our cloud infrastructure.

You will work at the intersection of networking, operating systems, distributed systems, and high-performance software, developing datapath technologies that enable Digital Ocean to deliver high throughput, low latency, and predictable network performance at scale.

This role will focus on the software running in and around the network datapath, including packet processing, forwarding, routing, acceleration, observability, and integration with host and hardware-based networking components. You will work closely with Network Infrastructure, Compute, Availability, and hardware teams to design, implement, optimize, and operate production networking systems.

The ideal candidate is a strong software engineer with deep networking knowledge who enjoys working close to the system and is excited about optimizing the path that packets take through cloud infrastructure.

• Design, develop, and optimize high-performance network datapath software for Digital Ocean's cloud infrastructure.
• Build and improve packet-processing and forwarding systems with a focus on throughput, latency, CPU efficiency, scalability, and reliability.
• Develop networking functionality across the host, kernel, user space, and hardware-accelerated datapath.
• Work with technologies such as Linux networking, eBPF, XDP, DPDK, , SR-IOV, and programmable datapaths.
• Analyze packet-processing paths and identify opportunities to eliminate bottlenecks and improve performance.
• Develop software for routing, packet filtering, encapsulation, tunneling, load balancing, traffic steering, and network virtualization.
• Build and improve datapath observability, telemetry, debugging, and performance monitoring.
• Design software that integrates with DPUs, SmartNICs, programmable NICs, and other hardware acceleration technologies.
• Develop automated testing and benchmarking frameworks to validate datapath correctness and performance.
• Investigate complex production networking issues, including packet drops, latency, throughput degradation, CPU utilization, and unexpected traffic behavior.
• Work with Network Infrastructure and Compute engineers to integrate datapath functionality into Digital Ocean's broader infrastructure architecture.
• Contribute to the design and implementation of next-generation network architectures.
• Author RFCs, architecture documents, technical proposals, design documents, and implementation plans to drive complex networking initiatives.
• Clearly document technical decisions, tradeoffs, performance characteristics, dependencies, and operational considerations.
• Participate in design reviews and provide technical guidance to other engineers.
• Mentor engineers and contribute to improving software engineering and networking practices across the organization.

• Strong experience designing and developing production software in C, C++, or Go.
• Strong understanding of networking and packet processing.
• Experience developing software for Linux-based networking systems.
• Solid understanding of networking concepts including TCP/IP, routing, switching, VLANs, VXLAN, BGP, ECMP, NAT, load balancing, and network virtualization.
• Experience debugging and optimizing performance-sensitive systems.
• Understanding of Linux networking internals, including the Linux kernel networking stack, network name spaces, sockets, queues, interrupts, and NIC drivers.
• Experience with one or more high-performance networking technologies such as DPDK, XDP, eBPF, , or SR-IOV.
• Experience with multithreaded and concurrent software.
• Strong understanding of performance analysis, profiling, benchmarking, and troubleshooting.
• Ability to reason about complex systems across hardware, operating systems, networking, and applications.
• Ability to independently drive projects from technical design through implementation and production deployment.
• Strong…