Software Engineer - Control​/Routing

Responsibilities

The Software Engineer will perform the requirements from PLM/Sales teams and work with team members to design and implement the feature. You will take ownership of their work and follow-through on defects reported.

• B.S. or equivalent in EE or CS, plus a minimum of 2 years of hands‑on experience in networking or routing software development.
• Strong programming skills in Go (primary) and C — the team works daily in Go for control‑plane services and in C for the FRR routing protocol stack.
• Deep, hands‑on understanding of networking fundamentals and IP routing; BGP knowledge preferred. Experience with FRR, ZebOS, or equivalent open‑source routing stacks preferred.
• Strong Linux networking fundamentals: interfaces, name spaces, the kernel routing/forwarding path, and routing‑related tooling preferred.
• Experience designing and implementing multithreaded systems preferred.
• Systematic debugging and root‑cause analysis skills for live routing issues. Fluency with using AI for tool development preferred.
• Ability to work in geographically distributed teams across US and India.
• Familiarity with cloud networking across major providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) — VPC/VNet constructs, peering, transit gateways, and how cloud networking interacts with routing preferred.

• Deeper expertise in L2/L3
  
  VPN.
• Experience with VPN/remote‑access technologies (OpenVPN or comparable tunneling).
• Experience with ZTNA / zero‑trust remote access solutions.
• Familiarity with the data path (encryption, NAT, overlay tunnels) and how it interacts with routing.

On-call is a mandatory part of this role. You’ll join the on-call rotation and help debug and resolve production provisioning issues, with coverage coordinated across the US and India. It’s also where a lot of the deepest learning happens — there’s no faster way to understand a system than to keep it running.

We’re looking for a candidate who is currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area and already authorized to work in the U.S. Unfortunately, we’re not able to offer visa sponsorship for this role at this time, as well as relocation bonus. This position is a hybrid role and requires onsite collaboration with the team at San Jose, CA office.

Alkira, a Lumen company, is building the future of enterprise networking: one programmable platform to connect, secure, and operate every cloud, site, partner, data center, and AI workload.

Founded by Amir and Atif Khan, the creators of Viptela and pioneers of the SD‑WAN market, Alkira was built to radically simplify how enterprises deploy and manage network infrastructure.

Today, as part of Lumen, we are bringing that cloud‑native operating model to a global network foundation trusted by the world’s largest enterprises.

Our platform helps customers move faster without managing hardware, stitching together providers, or operating fragmented cloud networks. Teams can build and scale connectivity on demand, apply consistent security and segmentation, and gain visibility across distributed environments from one place.

At Alkira, you’ll help shape the next chapter of networking: cloud‑like consumption, private‑network performance, and total control across the enterprise. We move fast, solve hard problems, and build technology that changes how global businesses connect.

Join us and help build the future of networking.

The salary range for this position is $125,000 —$150,000 USD. Your actual base salary and level will be determined on a case by case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: job‑related knowledge, skills, experience, education and location. The interview process will include a coding challenge, screening with the…