Principal Software Engineer, Forwarding Plane (Cloud Networking)

Location: Hybrid role based in San Jose, California, requiring onsite collaboration at the office 2–3 times per week.

Base salary: $167,273–$278,789 annually, depending on location, skills, experience, and other factors.

Company

hirify.global, a Lumen company, builds a programmable cloud networking platform for connecting, securing, and operating clouds, sites, partners, data centers, and AI workloads.

What you will do

• Own the architecture, implementation, and long-term roadmap of the core Forwarding Plane platform.
• Design scalable and resilient networking architectures for enterprise cloud networking and security services.
• Develop high-performance packet-processing software in C for Linux-based environments.
• Build and optimize flow and session management, NAT, policy enforcement, traffic steering, load balancing, IPsec, secure tunnels, and cloud connectivity services.
• Drive performance analysis and optimization using DPDK, VPP, kernel bypass, hardware acceleration, profiling, and production debugging.
• Lead architecture reviews, make cross-team technical decisions, mentor senior and staff engineers, and collaborate with product, platform, and security teams.

Requirements

• 12+ years of software engineering experience focused on networking and systems software.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, or a related discipline; a master’s degree is preferred.
• Expert proficiency in C and extensive systems programming experience in performance-sensitive environments.
• Deep knowledge of Linux internals, networking subsystems, TCP/IP, NAT, stateful connection tracking, IPsec, routing, forwarding, firewall, policy enforcement, and network security.
• Hands-on experience developing forwarding-plane or packet-processing software with DPDK, VPP, or similar frameworks.
• Demonstrated technical leadership, mentoring, and experience optimizing software for performance, scalability, and reliability.

Nice to have

• Experience building cloud networking platforms on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
• Knowledge of SD-WAN, SASE, ZTNA, and cloud security architectures.
• Experience with advanced Linux networking frameworks, kernel bypass technologies, or open-source networking projects.
• Background in distributed systems, highly available services, and multi-tenant cloud networking platforms.

Culture & Benefits

• Human-centered and connected work environment within a fast-moving, AI-focused organization.
• Clear expectations, autonomy, shared accountability, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Employment includes a background screening process, which may vary by position requirements.
• Equal employment opportunities are provided regardless of protected status.