Senior Core Infrastructure Engineer

** Job Description*
* We're seeking a  
** Senior Core Infrastructure Engineer
** to join our  
** DNS Data Plane team** . You'll design, build, and operate high-performance, highly reliable DNS services that power critical infrastructure at global scale. This role focuses on  
** performance-sensitive systems, distributed networking, and operational excellence*
* -balancing correctness, latency, and resiliency.

** Key Responsibilities*
* +  
** Design and implement DNS data plane components
** across authoritative and recursive request paths, with a focus on low-latency, high-throughput processing.

+ Build services and libraries in  
** Go, C, Java, and/or Python** , selecting the right language and approach for each component's performance and operational needs.

+  
** Optimize CPU, memory, and network I/O performance
** through efficient event loops, concurrency models, socket tuning, and profiling.

+  
** Own data plane components end to end:
** architecture, implementation, testing, safe rollout, observability, capacity planning, and ongoing operational health.

+ Develop and maintain  
** metrics, logs, tracing, SLOs, dashboards, and practical on-call playbooks** .

+ Improve reliability through  
** fault-tolerant design, graceful degradation, safe deployment practices, and proactive capacity planning** .

+ Collaborate with  
** control plane, security, SRE, and operations teams
** to deliver end-to-end DNS platform improvements.

+ Participate in code reviews, architecture reviews, and technical leadership;  
** mentor teammates and raise engineering standards** .

+ Take ownership of production outcomes by proactively identifying and driving  
** performance, reliability, security, and operational improvements** .

** Required Qualifications*
* + At least  
** 5 years of operations engineering experience
** in SaaS, cloud, or hybrid-cloud environments.

+  
** 5+ years managing and operating
** large-scale, highly distributed service infrastructure.

+ At least  
** 3 years of hands-on Linux experience** .

+ Strong experience building and operating  
** production-grade distributed systems and/or network services** .

+ Proficiency in one or more of  
** Go, C, Java, or Python** , with the ability and interest to work across languages when needed.

+ Solid understanding of  
** Linux systems, networking fundamentals-including TCP/UDP and sockets-concurrency, and performance profiling** .

+ Demonstrated experience designing  
** highly available systems
** and delivering safe production rollouts using practices such as  
** canaries and feature flags** .

+ Strong ownership mindset, with the ability to make sound technical decisions, navigate ambiguity, and drive complex problems through to durable resolution.

** Desired Skills / Nice to Have*
* + Deep DNS knowledge, including relevant  
** RFCs, UDP/TCP DNS, EDNS(0), DNSSEC, caching behavior, zone transfers, rate limiting, and load balancing** .

+

Experience with high-performance systems patterns such as  
** epoll/kqueue, asynchronous I/O, low-lock or lock-free data structures, and packet processing** .

+ Familiarity with  
** DDoS mitigation, abuse protection, and traffic engineering
** for L4/L7 services.

+

Experience with containers and orchestration platforms such as  
** Kubernetes** , including service meshes and network policies where relevant.

+ Infrastructure-as-code experience, especially  
** Terraform** .

+ Strong testing discipline, including  
** unit and integration testing, fuzzing, property-based testing, and chaos testing** .

+ Experience operating  
** mission-critical, 24/7 services** .

+ Experience using  
** AI-assisted development tools
** thoughtfully to accelerate coding, testing, debugging, and documentation while applying strong engineering judgment, ownership, code-quality, and security standards.

** What Success Looks Like*
* + You deliver  
** measurable improvements in latency, throughput, reliability, and operational efficiency** .

+ You take  
** end-to-end ownership
** of the systems you build, following through from initial design to long-term production health.

+ You evolve the DNS platform with  
** clean architecture, strong operational readiness, and secure-by-design practices** .

+ You identify risks and opportunities early, driving pragmatic improvements beyond the immediate task.

+ You raise team standards through  
** mentorship, thoughtful technical leadership, and a culture of operational excellence** .

** Responsibilities*
* + Design and implement  
** DNS data plane components
** for  
** low-latency, high-throughput
** request processing.

+ Build and maintain core services/libraries in  
** Go, C, Java, and/or Python.*
* + Drive performance optimization across CPU, memory, and network I/O (concurrency, socket tuning, event loops).

+ Own observability and operational readiness: metrics/logs/tracing, SLOs, runbooks, and on-call practices.

+ Improve reliability via fault-tolerant design, graceful degradation, and capacity planning.

+ Partner cross-functionally (control plane, security, SRE/ops) to…