Distributed Systems Engineer (L5) - Compute
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 18, 2026. First seen by Alion on Aug 19, 2026.
At Netflix, our mission is to entertain the world. Together, we are writing the next episode - pushing the boundaries of storytelling, global fandom and making the unimaginable a reality. We are a dream team obsessed with the uncomfortable excitement of discovering what happens when you merge creativity, intuition and cutting-edge technology. Come be a part of what’s next.
About the Team
Netflix’s Compute organization owns our internet-scale cloud footprint. We constantly innovate to increase fleet-wide agility, efficiency, and reliability of this infrastructure. We build, operate, and maintain Compute services so that Netflix developers can rely on foundational building blocks that enable a “set it and forget it” approach to achieving scalability and cost efficiency. Join us as we push the boundaries of performance and resilience, empowering developers to create groundbreaking applications on a reliable platform.
**We are looking to add new stunning colleagues to each team below**
Managed Compute
In Managed Compute, we believe getting up and running in the cloud quickly should be the easiest step to getting your service running in the cloud. To help our internal customers do this, we offer APIs and managed configurations on our compute platform that abstract away compute resource and scheduling complexity, scaling responsiveness, and multi-tenant fair sharing. We see the future as one where our customers can rely on industry leading, scalable, right-sized, and optimized compute without the need to know anything about where or on what their workloads run.
Capacity & Placement
We own one of the world’s largest cloud footprints and efficiently and reliably provide cloud resources for the thousands of microservices and batch workloads that power the Netflix experience. This team owns the Kubernetes control-plane for our mulit-tenant container platform and is responsible for reliably and efficiently orchestrating and placing workloads, ensuring capacity is available when and where it’s needed.
Compute Runtime
The Compute Runtime team’s mission is to drive innovation in effective, reliable computing at Netflix, and to bring that innovation back to the OSS world. This team tackles some of the largest cloud compute challenges in the industry. We own the Kubernetes data plane software, the container runtime, how we download and run containers, and the underlying compute node's operating system that powers Netflix’s Cloud applications.
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About the Role
We are seeking highly skilled and accomplished engineers with demonstrable experience in evolving large-scale infrastructure systems, managed services, and the underlying Linux Computing Platform. The ideal candidate will bring a combination of leading innovative solutions across functional teams and hands-on development experience in complex distributed systems, backend services, AWS/cloud, Kubernetes, and Linux Runtime environments.
In this role, you will:
Work closely with Product and Customers to design experiences that anticipate customers needs and make doing internet scale computing easy.
Design, develop, and operate high leverage managed compute services, informing trade-offs between complexity and ease-of-use against Netflix-wide business priorities.
Drive alignment with stakeholders and manage strategic partnerships.
Mentor peer engineers in building, maintaining, and deploying complex features that have impact across Netflix.
Drive operational excellence on the team, continuously improving incident response, on-call, and other operational practices.
Maintain currency on industry trends for new architectures, features, and off-the-shelf services; make recommendations on incorporating industry trends.
Desired Skills & Experience:
A proven track record of driving infrastructure changes at scale
Hands-on experience building, maintaining, and integrating with Kubernetes
Passion for technology, pragmatic thinking, ability to jump into an ambiguous area and break down complex problems.
Excellent communication and relationship-building skills.
Exceptional analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to break down complex problems, identify root causes using data, and deliver clear, actionable solutions.
Demonstrate a high degree of ownership and accountability for execution, managing multiple priorities effectively in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.
Possess a growth mindset and a continuous drive to learn, evaluate, and adapt to new and evolving technologies.
Experience with Golang, Java, and/or Python.
You will be successful in this role if you:
Shine when you have to balance complex customer, engineering, and other stakeholder needs, and are obsessed with optimizing for the customer whenever possible
Have the ability to define and self-manage cross-functional projects fueled by ambiguous questions.
Lead thoughtful collaboration, take pride in your work, and enjoy taking full ownership of projects from conception to production.
Have read about Netflix’s culture and think you would thrive here.
Netflix provides comprehensive benefits including Health Plans, Mental Health support, a 401(k) Retirement Plan with employer match, Stock Option Program, Disability Programs, Health Savings and Flexible Spending Accounts, Family-forming benefits, and Life and Serious Injury Benefits. We also offer paid leave of absence programs. Full-time hourly employees accrue 35 days annually for paid time off to be used for vacation, holidays, and sick paid time off. Full-time salaried employees are immediately entitled to flexible time off. See more details about our Benefits here.
Netflix is a unique culture and environment. Learn more here.
Inclusion is a Netflix value and we strive to host a meaningful interview experience for all candidates. If you want an accommodation/adjustment for a disability or any other reason during the hiring process, please send a request to your recruiting partner.
We are an equal-opportunity employer and celebrate diversity, recognizing that diversity builds stronger teams. We approach diversity and inclusion seriously and thoughtfully. 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.
Job is open for no less than 7 days and will be removed when the position is filled.