Lead Principal Core Infrastructure Engineer

Oracle•Seattle, WA

About The Position

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is experiencing rapid growth, positioning itself as a leading global cloud platform. The increasing demand for AI, machine learning, and traditional enterprise workloads necessitates advancements in cloud infrastructure, from silicon to system software and the hardware-software interface. The Virtual Networking Data Plane team within OCI is responsible for developing highly customizable Virtual Cloud Network data plane services utilizing industry-leading programmable SmartNICs and DPUs. These services ensure predictable performance, secure isolation, and high availability for OCI customers at a cloud scale. We are at the forefront of a significant transformation in cloud infrastructure and are seeking talented systems engineers to help shape its future. This role offers a hands-on opportunity for a systems software engineer passionate about developing low-level software that operates closely with hardware. Domain-specific processors and programmable hardware accelerators are becoming crucial for modern cloud infrastructure, especially as data centers adapt to support AI-ready, efficient, and sustainable computing workloads. In this position, you will contribute to the development of software for next-generation programmable DPUs, which are fundamental to OCI’s networking platform. You will work on performance-critical systems that integrate Linux internals, hardware-software co-design, and high-performance networking.

Requirements

Expertise with systems programming in C, C++, Rust, or similar low-level languages.
Strong understanding of Linux operating system internals.
Experience with networking protocols, packet processing, or high-performance network programming.
Familiarity with embedded systems, SmartNICs, DPUs, programmable hardware accelerators, or hardware-adjacent software development.
Ability to debug complex software issues across operating system, driver, firmware, and hardware boundaries.
Strong collaboration skills and the ability to work effectively in a highly technical engineering environment.
15 years of experience in software development OR Bachelor's of Technology (B.Tech) Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Computer Information Systems, Information Systems, Information Technology, Telecommunications, Mathematics, Physics, or related field AND 11 years of experience in software development OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Computer Information Systems, Information Systems, Information Technology, Telecommunications, Mathematics, Physics, or related field AND 11 years of experience in software development OR Master's of Technology (M.Tech) Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Computer Information Systems, Information Systems, Information Technology, Telecommunications, Mathematics, Physics, or related field AND 9 years of experience in software development OR Master's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Computer Information Systems, Information Systems, Information Technology, Telecommunications, Mathematics, Physics, or related field AND 9 years of experience in software development OR Doctorate in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Computer Information Systems, Information Systems, Information Technology, Telecommunications, Mathematics, Physics, or related field AND 7 year of experience in software development.
Demonstrated ability in or knowledge of data management, including designing, operationalizing, securing, and monitoring data pipelines.
Demonstrated ability in or knowledge of data integration, including specifying and using services to load and manage data from various sources.
5 year of academic or professional experience with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google, Oracle Cloud).
10 years of experience working in testing and automation at the system level.
4 year of experience working with delivering and operating large-scale distributed systems.

Nice To Haves

Experience developing software for SmartNICs, DPUs, NIC drivers, kernel networking, or user-space packet processing frameworks.
Knowledge of virtualization, cloud networking, SDN, or distributed systems.
Experience with performance tuning, concurrency, memory management, or low-latency systems.
Background in hardware-software co-design or close collaboration with silicon, platform, or firmware teams.
16 years of experience in software development OR Bachelor's of Technology (B.Tech) Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Computer Information Systems, Information Systems, Information Technology, Telecommunications, Mathematics, Physics, or related field AND 12 years of experience in software development OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Computer Information Systems, Information Systems, Information Technology, Telecommunications, Mathematics, Physics, or related field AND 12 years of experience in software development OR Master's of Technology (M.Tech) Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Computer Information Systems, Information Systems, Information Technology, Telecommunications, Mathematics, Physics, or related field AND 10 years of experience in software development OR Master's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Computer Information Systems, Information Systems, Information Technology, Telecommunications, Mathematics, Physics, or related field AND 10 years of experience in software development OR Doctorate in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Computer Information Systems, Information Systems, Information Technology, Telecommunications, Mathematics, Physics, or related field AND 8 years of experience in software development.
5 year of experience with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google, Oracle Cloud).

Responsibilities

Architect and implement high performance, highly available system software components – DPDK-based networking stack, hardware abstraction layers, and custom hardware acceleration stacks.
Leverage C/C++ expertise in building network virtualization, high performance packet processing and protocol parsers.
Leverage Linux OS expertise to manage memory, scheduling, I/O virtualization, kernel drivers and security features of the DPUs.
Collaborate with senior architects and peers across Compute, Storage, OS and Security groups across Oracle, to lead and drive project execution.