Principal Infrastructure Architect

DigitalOcean • Seattle, WA

5d • $184,000 - $231,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

This role is a Principal Infrastructure Architect on our Hardware Engineering team, this individual owns the forward looking roadmap for our CPU, GPU,Storage, and Infrastructure hardware platforms. Looking forward as the industry evolves, , from Air to Liquid to 800VDC rack scale systems. Collaborating with peers on the Infrastructure and Networking teams who own the roadmaps for datacenters and networking at DO.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in server architecture, storage architecture, infrastructure engineering, or a related field, with a track record of owning and deploying designs at scale.
• Deep expertise in server and storage hardware platforms with strong working knowledge of compute technologies across the spectrum—from commodity CPU servers to rack scale GPU and xPU platforms.
• Working experience of driving AI/ML hardware roadmaps and the ability to translate evolving silicon, accelerator, memory, and storage trends into future-proofed platform designs.
• Knowledge of emerging and non-traditional hardware approaches such as CXL memory pooling, DPUs/SmartNICs, disaggregated storage, and computational storage.
• Demonstrated ability to lead proof-of-concept initiatives and scale successful pilots into global deployment standards.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, partnering with technical and business teams along with external vendors and partners.
• Excellent communication and leadership skills, including mentoring engineers and representing the company externally at conferences and through technical papers.

Responsibilities

• Defining and owning DigitalOcean's hardware architectures for next-generation compute environments across our CPU, GPU, Storage, and Infrastructure Server SKU products, navigating shifts in technology, networking topologies, and AI/ML requirements.
• Serving as DigitalOcean's primary technical stakeholder for infrastructure technologies partnering with SMEs in the Product and Hardware Engineering organization.
• Providing leadership and guidance as a primary stakeholder in the hardware selection and qualification process.
• Evangelizing emerging technical concepts to senior leadership to inform product and business strategies.
• Architecting end-to-end server designs with vendors and partner teams to support a wide variety of CPU, GPU, and other emerging workloads.
• Architecting end-to-end storage topologies with vendor teams to support diverse workloads across performance, capacity, and archival tiers, moving from direct-attached to disaggregated and software-defined storage.
• Leading proof-of-concept (PoC) initiatives for emerging infrastructure technologies and transitioning successful pilots into global deployment standards.
• Mentor engineers at all levels and contribute to a culture of technical excellence, inclusivity, and impact.
• Represent DigitalOcean in the broader community attending conferences, contributing to papers and presentations.

Benefits

• Competitive array of benefits to support you from our Employee Assistance Program to Local Employee Meetups to flexible time off policy
• Reimbursement for relevant conferences, training, and education
• Access to LinkedIn Learning's 10,000+ courses
• Bonus in addition to base salary
• Equity compensation to eligible employees, including equity grants upon hire and the option to participate in our Employee Stock Purchase Program

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: No Education Listed