{"id":2618365,"url":"https://alion.io/job/digitalocean-staff-engineer-network-infrastructure-5","title":"Staff Engineer, Network Infrastructure","company":{"id":1115,"name":"DigitalOcean","domain":"digitalocean.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/digitalocean","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":null},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"staff","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Seattle, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":191200,"max":239000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":239000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"BGP","optional":false},{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"DigitalOcean","optional":false},{"name":"eBPF","optional":false},{"name":"Platform Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"TCP/IP","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-21T22:09:41Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-02","last_verified_at":"2026-10-15T20:08:06Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":24,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":24},"description":"Dive in and do the best work of your career at DigitalOcean. Journey alongside a strong community of top talent who are relentless in their drive to build the simplest scalable cloud. If you have a growth mindset, naturally like to think big and bold, and are energized by the fast-paced environment of a true industry disruptor, you’ll find your place here. We value winning together-while learning, having fun, and making a profound difference for the dreamers and builders in the world. \nAbout the Role\nDigitalOcean is looking for a Staff Software Engineer to help design and build the next generation of software powering our global network infrastructure.\nThis role sits at the intersection of software engineering, networking, distributed systems, and hardware acceleration. You will build the automation, orchestration, and infrastructure software that enables DigitalOcean to scale its network reliably while exploring new architectures using Data Processing Units (DPUs), SmartNICs, and programmable network infrastructure.\nYou will work closely with network, infrastructure, and hardware engineering teams to turn complex networking and infrastructure requirements into scalable software. This includes everything from network provisioning and device lifecycle management to telemetry, automated remediation, and software-driven network and DPU orchestration.\nAs a Staff Engineer, you will have impact beyond your own code. You will establish technical direction, drive architectural decisions, identify opportunities to move functionality into software and hardware accelerators, and help define how DigitalOcean's infrastructure evolves over the coming years.\nA key part of the role is the ability to turn ambiguous technical problems into clear proposals and executable plans. You will be expected to author RFCs, architecture and design documents, technical proposals, and other project documentation needed to establish alignment and drive complex initiatives from concept through implementation.\nWhat You'll Be Doing\nDesign and build network automation and orchestration systems that enable reliable deployment and operation of DigitalOcean's global network infrastructure.\nDevelop software for network provisioning, configuration management, device lifecycle management, validation, monitoring, and automated remediation.\nDesign and build software systems that integrate with DPUs, SmartNICs, and programmable network infrastructure.\nDevelop automation supporting large-scale datacenter and Point of Presence deployments, including new hardware, network fabrics, routing infrastructure, and vendor integrations.\nBuild systems that abstract differences across network vendors, and hardware implementations while maintaining strong operational safety and reliability.\nBuild tools that help engineers diagnose network and infrastructure issues and automate common operational workflows.\nIdentify manual, repetitive, or error-prone infrastructure operations and turn them into scalable software solutions.\nPartner closely with network engineers and infrastructure architects to translate complex networking and hardware requirements into maintainable software architectures.\nEstablish engineering standards and best practices for infrastructure software development, testing, observability, and operational readiness.\nLead projects from early technical design through implementation, deployment, and long-term operation.\nMentor engineers and provide technical leadership across the broader engineering organization.\nWhat We're Looking For\nSignificant experience designing and building production software systems at scale.\nStrong software engineering fundamentals, including distributed systems, API design, concurrency, testing, observability, and system reliability.\nStrong programming experience in one or more languages such as Go, Python, or C++\nExperience building automation, orchestration, or infrastructure platforms.\nStrong understanding of networking, including TCP/IP, BGP, EVPN/VXLAN, VLANs, routing, switching, and network telemetry.\nExperience working with network devices, network automation frameworks, APIs, or vendor SDKs.\nExperience designing systems that operate safely in highly available, production environments.\nAbility to understand complex infrastructure problems and simplify them into scalable software architectures.\nStrong technical writing skills, with demonstrated ability to produce RFCs, architecture/design documents, technical proposals, project plans, and other documentation required to drive complex engineering projects.\nAbility to take ambiguous problems and turn them into clear technical proposals, documented requirements, architectural decisions, and actionable implementation plans.\nStrong communication skills and the ability to influence technical decisions across engineering teams.\nDemonstrated ability to operate as a technical leader without relying on organizational authority.\nExperience in one or more of the following is particularly valuable:\nBuilding software that uses DPUs for networking, security, storage, virtualization, or infrastructure offload.\nDesigning DPU orchestration, provisioning, lifecycle management, or configuration systems.\nExperience with programmable data planes, eBPF, P4, or other technologies used to implement network functionality in hardware or accelerated environments.\nExperience integrating DPUs or SmartNICs into cloud, datacenter, or virtualization infrastructure.\nAt the Staff level, you will be expected to:\nOwn technical direction for significant areas of network and infrastructure software.\nDefine the software architecture required to integrate emerging technologies such as DPUs and programmable infrastructure into DigitalOcean's production environment.\nIdentify systemic infrastructure problems and define solutions that span multiple teams and infrastructure layers.\nMake architectural decisions that balance scalability, reliability, performance, hardware capabilities, operational complexity, and engineering velocity.\nLead ambiguous, high-impact initiatives from problem definition through design, implementation, deployment, and operation.\nOwn the technical documentation and RFC process for major initiatives, ensuring that architecture, requirements, alternatives, tradeoffs, dependencies, risks, and decisions are clearly documented.\nActively leverage AI tooling to amplify engineering impact and delivery speed, using AI to accelerate development, debugging, testing, documentation, and exploration of technical solutions while applying strong engineering judgment and maintaining production-quality standards. \nCreate leverage by developing platforms, abstractions, and automation that enable other engineers to move faster.\nAnticipate operational and scalability challenges before they become production problems.\nEvaluate emerging hardware and software technologies and determine where they can provide meaningful advantages to DigitalOcean's infrastructure.\nRaise the technical capabilities of the broader engineering organization through mentoring, design reviews, technical documentation, and technical leadership.\nBuild strong partnerships across Network Infrastructure, Compute, Storage, Availability, Security, and Hardware/Platform Engineering.\nNice to have:\nExperience building software for hyperscale or cloud infrastructure.\nProduction experience with DPUs, SmartNICs, or IPUs.\nExperience with DPU-based network, storage, security, or virtualization offload.\nExperience with SONiC or other disaggregated networking platforms.\nExperience working with white-box networking and multiple network vendors.\nExperience building or operating 400G+ datacenter networks.\nExperience with OpenConfig, gNMI, NETCONF, YANG, or similar network management technologies.\nExperience with streaming telemetry and large-scale network observability.\nExperience building automated network validation, testing, or remediation systems.\nExperience with Kubernetes and cloud-native infrastructure.\nExperience with eBPF, P4, programmable data planes, or hardware-accelerated networking.\nExperience contributing to or leading open-source infrastructure projects.\nWhy DigitalOcean\nAt DigitalOcean, you'll have the opportunity to solve challenging infrastructure problems at significant scale while helping build technology that makes cloud infrastructure simpler and more accessible.\nThe Network Infrastructure Engineering organization plays a foundational role in DigitalOcean's ability to expand its datacenter footprint, increase network capacity, improve reliability, introduce new network technologies, and deliver a consistent experience to customers around the world.\nThis role provides an opportunity to shape how networking and infrastructure software interacts with the underlying hardware. The ideal candidate will help DigitalOcean move beyond traditional host-based networking toward a more programmable and hardware-accelerated infrastructure architecture, while maintaining the simplicity, reliability, and operational excellence expected from a cloud platform.\nThe Staff Engineer will have the opportunity to influence this evolution from architecture through implementation-identifying opportunities, evaluating technologies, writing RFCs and technical proposals, aligning engineering teams, and ultimately delivering production systems that operate at DigitalOcean scale.\nCompensation Range: \n$191,200 - $239,000\n*This is a hybrid role\nJR: 2026-8150\n#LI-Hybrid\nWhy You’ll Like Working for DigitalOcean\nWe innovate with purpose. You’ll be a part of a cutting-edge technology company with an upward trajectory, who are proud to simplify cloud and AI so builders can spend more time creating software that changes the world. As a member of the team, you will be a Shark who thinks big, bold, and scrappy, like an owner with a bias for action and a powerful sense of responsibility for customers, products, employees, and decisions.\nWe prioritize career development. At DO, you’ll do the best work of your career. You will work with some of the smartest and most interesting people in the industry. We are a high-performance organization that will always challenge you to think big. Our organizational development team will provide you with resources to ensure you keep growing. We provide employees with reimbursement for relevant conferences, training, and education. All employees have access to LinkedIn Learning's 10,000+ courses to support their continued growth and development.\nWe care about your well-being. Regardless of your location, we will provide you with a competitive array of benefits to support you from our Employee Assistance Program to Local Employee Meetups to flexible time off policy, to name a few. While the philosophy around our benefits is the same worldwide, specific benefits may vary based on local regulations and preferences.\nWe reward our employees. The salary range for this position is based on market data, relevant years of experience, and skills. You may qualify for a bonus in addition to base salary; bonus amounts are determined based on company and individual performance. We also provide equity compensation to eligible employees, including equity grants upon hire and the option to participate in our Employee Stock Purchase Program.\nDigitalOcean is an equal-opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service.\nApplication Limit: You may apply to a maximum of 3 positions within any 180-day period. 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