<div class="content-intro"><p>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. </p></div><h2><strong>About the Role</strong></h2> <p>DigitalOcean is looking for a Senior Software Engineer, Network Datapath to help build and evolve the software that powers high-performance networking across our cloud infrastructure.</p> <p>You will work at the intersection of networking, operating systems, distributed systems, and high-performance software, developing datapath technologies that enable DigitalOcean to deliver high throughput, low latency, and predictable network performance at scale.</p> <p>This role will focus on the software running in and around the network datapath, including packet processing, forwarding, routing, acceleration, observability, and integration with host and hardware-based networking components. You will work closely with Network Infrastructure, Compute, Availability, and hardware teams to design, implement, optimize, and operate production networking systems.</p> <p>The ideal candidate is a strong software engineer with deep networking knowledge who enjoys working close to the system and is excited about optimizing the path that packets take through cloud infrastructure.</p> <h2><strong>What You'll Be Doing</strong></h2> <ul> <li>Design, develop, and optimize high-performance network datapath software for DigitalOcean's cloud infrastructure.</li> <li>Build and improve packet-processing and forwarding systems with a focus on throughput, latency, CPU efficiency, scalability, and reliability.</li> <li>Develop networking functionality across the host, kernel, user space, and hardware-accelerated datapath.</li> <li>Work with technologies such as Linux networking, eBPF, XDP, DPDK, AF_XDP, SR-IOV, and programmable datapaths.</li> <li>Analyze packet-processing paths and identify opportunities to eliminate bottlenecks and improve performance.</li> <li>Develop software for routing, packet filtering, encapsulation, tunneling, load balancing, traffic steering, and network virtualization.</li> <li>Build and improve datapath observability, telemetry, debugging, and performance monitoring.</li> <li>Design software that integrates with DPUs, SmartNICs, programmable NICs, and other hardware acceleration technologies.</li> <li>Develop automated testing and benchmarking frameworks to validate datapath correctness and performance.</li> <li>Investigate complex production networking issues, including packet drops, latency, throughput degradation, CPU utilization, and unexpected traffic behavior.</li> <li>Work with Network Infrastructure and Compute engineers to integrate datapath functionality into DigitalOcean's broader infrastructure architecture.</li> <li>Contribute to the design and implementation of next-generation network architectures.</li> <li>Author RFCs, architecture documents, technical proposals, design documents, and implementation plans to drive complex networking initiatives.</li> <li>Clearly document technical decisions, tradeoffs, performance characteristics, dependencies, and operational considerations.</li> <li>Participate in design reviews and provide technical guidance to other engineers.</li> <li>Mentor engineers and contribute to improving software engineering and networking practices across the organization.</li> </ul> <h2><strong>What We're Looking For</strong></h2> <ul> <li>Strong experience designing and developing production software in C, C++, or Go.</li> <li>Strong understanding of networking and packet processing.</li> <li>Experience developing software for Linux-based networking systems.</li> <li>Solid understanding of networking concepts including TCP/IP, routing, switching, VLANs, VXLAN, BGP, ECMP, NAT, load balancing, and network virtualization.</li> <li>Experience debugging and optimizing performance-sensitive systems.</li> <li>Understanding of Linux networking internals, including the Linux kernel networking stack, network namespaces, sockets, queues, interrupts, and NIC drivers.</li> <li>Experience with one or more high-performance networking technologies such as DPDK, XDP, eBPF, AF_XDP, or SR-IOV.</li> <li>Experience with multithreaded and concurrent software.</li> <li>Strong understanding of performance analysis, profiling, benchmarking, and troubleshooting.</li> <li>Ability to reason about complex systems across hardware, operating systems, networking, and applications.</li> <li>Ability to independently drive projects from technical design through implementation and production deployment.</li> <li>Strong technical writing skills, with the ability to produce RFCs, architecture/design documents, technical proposals, and other documentation required to drive engineering projects.</li> <li>Strong communication skills and ability to work effectively across engineering teams.</li> </ul> <p>Experience with hardware-accelerated networking is highly valuable. This includes:</p> <ul> <li>Experience developing software for DPUs, SmartNICs, IPUs, or programmable NICs.</li> <li>U