Principal Software Engineer, Forwarding Plane

Alkira, a Lumen company, is seeking a Principal Software Engineer, Forwarding Plane to lead the architecture, design, and evolution of our next-generation cloud networking Forwarding Plane platform. This is a highly visible technical leadership role responsible for building and scaling the core packet‑processing infrastructure that powers Alkira's cloud networking and security services.

Alkira, a Lumen company, is seeking a Principal Software Engineer, Forwarding Plane to lead the architecture, design, and evolution of our next-generation cloud networking Forwarding Plane platform. This is a highly visible technical leadership role responsible for building and scaling the core packet‑processing infrastructure that powers Alkira's cloud networking and security services.

Location:

This position is a hybrid role and requires onsite collaboration with the team at our San Jose, CA office 2 - 3 times during the week

• Own the architecture, design, implementation, and long-term technical roadmap of Alkira's core Forwarding Plane platform.
• Define scalable and resilient networking architectures supporting enterprise-grade cloud networking and security services.
• Drive technical strategy for Forwarding Plane reliability, scalability, observability, and maintainability.
• Establish engineering standards and best practices across Forwarding Plane development effort

• Design and develop high-performance packet‑processing systems and networking services.
• Build and enhance Forwarding Plane components including:
• Flow/Session management
• Network Address Translation (NAT)
• Policy enforcement
• Traffic steering and load balancing
• IPsec and secure tunnel processing
• Cloud connectivity services
• Develop performance-critical software in C for Linux-based environments.
• Optimize packet‑processing pipelines for throughput, latency, and resource efficiency.
• Expertise in cloud networking across AWS, Azure, GCP and other cloud service providers

• Drive end-to-end performance optimization across the networking stack.
• Leverage modern packet‑processing frameworks such as DPDK and VPP.
• Evaluate and integrate emerging technologies including:
• Hardware acceleration
• Kernel bypass technologies
• Cloud-native networking innovations
• Perform deep performance analysis, profiling, debugging, and tuning of production systems.

• Lead architecture reviews and drive technical decision-making across teams.
• Mentor senior and staff-level engineers on networking and systems design.
• Partner with product management, platform engineering, and security teams to deliver strategic initiatives.
• Influence technology direction and guide the adoption of networking best practices across the organization.

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Computer Engineering, or related discipline;
  Master's degree preferred.
• 12+ years of software engineering experience with significant focus on networking and systems software.
• Expert proficiency in
  
  C.
• Deep understanding of Linux operating systems, networking subsystems, and kernel internals.
• Extensive systems programming experience in performance-sensitive environments.
• Strong expertise in TCP/IP networking fundamentals and protocols.
• Hands‑on experience developing high‑performance Forwarding Plane or packet‑processing software.
• Deep knowledge of:
  • NAT
• Stateful connection tracking
• IPsec
• Routing and forwarding technologies
• Firewall and policy enforcement systems
• Network security concepts
• Experience with DPDK, VPP, or similar high‑performance packet‑processing frameworks.
• Proven experience analyzing and optimizing software for performance, scalability, and reliability.
• Demonstrated technical leadership and mentoring…