Principal Software Engineer, Core Infrastructure
About The Position
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to build a new Data Processing Unit (DPU) platform spanning networking and storage. The role addresses packet processing, host-to-DPU data movement, concurrency, and predictable performance under congestion and resource pressure. The engineer will own a substantial component, including its architecture, interfaces, implementation, performance, and operational readiness. Starting from broad requirements, they will resolve design choices, drive delivery with partner engineers, and propose cross-component changes in coordination with subsystem owners. Deep networking expertise is essential; storage familiarity is required, and substantial storage experience is especially valuable. The position includes technical leadership through mentoring, design reviews, and establishing testing and performance-regression practices. It also involves validating AI-assisted work and helping the team adopt effective coding, testing, debugging, and documentation practices while maintaining quality and accountability. Success means delivering a critical component with clear architecture, stable interfaces, and demonstrated performance and reliability, while coordinating integration and helping engineers deliver within that architecture.
Requirements
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience in systems or infrastructure software, including substantial hands-on experience building high-performance networking data planes.
- Demonstrated ownership of substantial component architecture and delivery from broad requirements through production.
- Deep experience implementing or optimizing packet processing systems, with strong knowledge of network virtualization, forwarding, encapsulation, and traffic management.
- Strong C or C++ proficiency and Linux systems knowledge, including concurrency, memory management, multicore processing, and performance profiling.
- Familiarity with storage architectures and data paths, and ability to evaluate how component choices affect storage performance and failure handling.
- Ability to diagnose complex correctness or performance issues across software layers using measurements and repeatable experiments.
- Experience defining interfaces, coordinating technical dependencies, and owning component performance and operational readiness.
- Clear design communication and experience mentoring engineers through reviews, implementation, and debugging.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
Nice To Haves
- Packet-processing experience with DPDK or comparable user-space frameworks; virtual switching, connection tracking, policy enforcement, or offload implementation.
- Experience with DPUs, SmartNICs, AMD Pensando, NVIDIA BlueField/DOCA, P4, or comparable DPU acceleration technologies.
- Substantial storage development experience, including block storage, NVMe, NVMe over Fabrics, RDMA, or storage virtualization.
- Experience with PCIe, DMA, SR-IOV, IOMMU, zero-copy techniques, hardware co-design, staged deployments, fault injection, or upgrade compatibility.
Responsibilities
- Own component architecture and delivery by translating broad requirements into a component design and executable milestones, making decisions within agreed subsystem boundaries, and carrying the work through production.
- Design high-performance data paths, including packet processing, network virtualization, forwarding, policy, or acceleration capabilities, with deliberate choices about concurrency, buffering, memory ownership, and hardware interfaces.
- Define and coordinate component contracts with networking, storage, firmware, and hardware partners; resolve dependencies, drive integration, and escalate tradeoffs requiring subsystem-wide decisions.
- Own component performance by defining representative benchmarks and targets and investigating throughput, tail latency, CPU utilization, and memory efficiency under load and resource pressure.
- Evaluate effects of component choices on storage I/O performance, backpressure, and failure handling, collaborating with storage engineers to preserve correctness and reliable recovery.
- Deliver production readiness by owning instrumentation, fault handling, compatibility, and upgrade behavior, and driving qualification, operational improvements, cross-layer debugging, and production support.
- Mentor engineers, lead component design reviews, establish useful tests and performance regression checks, and help feature owners make independent decisions within the architecture.
- Validate AI-assisted work and help the team adopt effective coding, testing, debugging, and documentation practices that reduce repetitive work while preserving quality, accountability, and a sustainable engineering experience.
Benefits
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance, including expert medical opinion.
- Short-term and long-term disability.
- Life insurance and AD&D; supplemental life insurance for employees, spouses, and children.
- Health care and dependent care Flexible Spending Accounts.
- Pre-tax commuter and parking benefits.
- 401(k) Savings and Investment Plan with company match.
- Paid time off, including flexible vacation for eligible salaried employees or accrued vacation for other eligible employees.
- 11 paid holidays.
- Paid sick leave: 72 hours upon hire, refreshed annually, with unused time carrying over up to a 112-hour cap.
- Paid parental leave.
- Adoption assistance.
- Employee Stock Purchase Plan.
- Financial planning and group legal benefits.
- Voluntary auto, homeowner, and pet insurance.
- May be eligible for bonus, equity, and compensation deferral.
- Competitive benefits supporting flexible medical, life insurance, and retirement options.
- Volunteer programs.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
