Senior Software Engineer: Network at DigitalOcean in San Francisco, CA

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.

We want people who are passionate about solving large scale complex distributed systems challenges.

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer with expertise in Distributed Systems and Networking to build cutting edge Network Software that will run on tens of thousands of hypervisors and bare-metal servers across our global infrastructure network. You will be responsible for building the next generation of software-defined networking on our platform: providing flexible, yet simple, primitives that our customers have come to love.

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Designing and building highly efficient scalable services to enable network datapath for the next generation of features such as Virtual Private Cloud, Floating IPs and internal tooling for the virtual network stack to scale across hundreds of thousands of customer droplets.
• Work on new architecture initiatives to build systems that enable fleet optimization such as optimizing the virtual networking stack to reduce CAPEX / OPEX.
• Solving problems in network performance while leveraging on concepts of distributed systems to reduce performance bottlenecks, single points of failures and inter-dependencies of our many regions across the globe.
• Solving complex data modeling challenges that have come into existence due to the hyper growth of DigitalOcean such as - our growing inventory of IP addresses, future transition to IPv6 and support for our core network primitives, creating flexible and composable virtual nics and more!
• Diving deep into the ocean of highly available & fault-tolerant virtual networking.
• Debugging/troubleshooting complex production issues across datacenters in real time and enhancing our playbooks and automation to counter their recurrence.
• Participating in a team effort to improve visibility on various network metrics.
• Using technologies and tools such as: Linux, Go, GRPC, Docker, Open vSwitch, eBPF, Prometheus, MySQL, and others!

What We’ll Expect From You:

• Expertise with languages like Go, C, C++ along with scripting skills. Go is a plus.
• Experience developing scalable, resilient and fault tolerant network software for highly distributed systems.
• Understanding of the OSI network model.
• Hands-on experience working on Linux networking including tools for network I/O performance tuning is a huge plus.
• Bonus: Prior development experience around firewalls, web security, IDP/IPS, eBPF, XDP, development of datapath for packet routing and forwarding is a huge plus!
• Ability to self-organize, take ownership, initiative and clearly communicate intent. Ours is a completely remote team so the ability to communicate effectively in a remote environment is key to being a part of this team and its success.
• Be ready and responsible for taking complex challenges that come up in a fast-paced environment.

Compensation Range:

• $139,000 - $174,000

*This is a remote role

JR: 2026-7635

#LI-Remote

Why You’ll Like Working for DigitalOcean

• We 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.
• We 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.
• We 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.
• We 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.
• DigitalOcean 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.

Application Limit: You may apply to a maximum of 3 positions within any 180-day period. This policy promotes better role-candidate matching and encourages thoughtful applications where your qualifications align most strongly.