Senior Engineer: Inference Data Plane at DigitalOcean

Key Facts

Remote From:

Washington (USA)

Full time

Senior (5-10 years)

English

Hard Skills

Other Skills

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Collaboration
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Communication
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Leadership
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Strategic Thinking
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Growth Mindedness
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Problem Solving

Roles & Responsibilities

Distributed Systems Mastery: deep experience with distributed and cloud services, messaging systems, databases, infrastructure as code, observability, and security
Cloud Infrastructure Expertise: advanced knowledge of cloud networking (VPCs, Load Balancers), Kubernetes, and cloud storage (block, object, NFS)
AI/ML Domain Knowledge: proven experience building AI/ML products, Gen AI platforms, LLM hosting, and inference workflows
Operational Track Record: significant experience running customer-facing, high-availability services across multiple regions

Requirements:

Architectural Leadership: drive the design and development of distributed services in the AI Infrastructure ecosystem, including orchestration for LLM inference and hosting; focus on control plane orchestration of compute, networking, and storage for AI workloads
System Design: create and assess system design proposals for high-scale, multi-tenant inference cloud ecosystem with strong availability and resiliency
Operational Excellence: lead operational strategy, defining SLOs and leveraging observability to maintain platform health in a high-scale environment
Cross-Functional Collaboration: partner with Product Management, TPMs, and Engineering Management to align technical roadmaps with business priorities

Job description

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.

DigitalOcean is expanding its AI Infrastructure layer to support the next generation of AI-driven applications.

We are seeking a Senior Engineer 2 to play a key role in our AI Infrastructure Control Plane team. This team's mission is to orchestrate and operate compute fleet, storage and networking for running AI workloads - inference, training, fine-tuning - at scale. In this high-impact role, you will be a primary technical architect and leader, responsible for building the foundational control plane services that power our large Gen AI model hosting infrastructure.

This is a hands-on role, requiring you to be able to develop high quality software while availing of all the productivity boosts granted by the latest AI coding agents. You will bridge the gap between high-scale distributed systems and specialized AI inference orchestration to ensure our global platform remains simple, reliable, and accessible for developers building the next generation of AI applications.

What You’ll Do:

Architectural Leadership: Drive the design and development of distributed services within our AI Infrastructure ecosystem, including complex orchestration for LLM inference and hosting services. Your focus will be the control plane orchestration of compute, networking, and storage for AI workloads.
System Design: Create, refine, and assess system design proposals for our high-scale, multi-tenant inference cloud ecosystem, ensuring they meet rigorous standards for availability and resiliency.
Operational Excellence: Lead the operational strategy for critical services, defining SLOs and leveraging advanced observability to maintain platform health in a high-scale environment.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner deeply with Product Management, TPMs, and Engineering Management peers to align technical roadmaps with business priorities.
Strategic Growth: Work on new architecture initiatives that enable fleet optimization and help evolve DigitalOcean into a market leader for AI-native networking and infrastructure.

What You’ll Bring to DigitalOcean:

Distributed Systems Mastery: Deep experience with distributed and cloud services, including messaging systems, databases, and infrastructure as code, observability, and security.
Cloud Infrastructure Expertise: Advanced knowledge of cloud networking (VPCs, Load Balancers), containerization (Kubernetes), and cloud storage (block, object, NFS). Deep networking software experience (VLAN, RDMA, Ethernet, L3-L7 network protocols, etc) would be a plus.
AI/ML Domain Knowledge: Proven experience building AI/ML products, specifically focusing on Gen AI platforms, LLM hosting, and inference workflows.
Operational Track Record: Significant experience running customer-facing, high-availability services across multiple regions.
Open Source Engagement: Experience integrating and building with open-source software and a bias for technical ownership.
Software Engineering: Expert proficiency in GoLang or Python and familiarity with gRPC for service-to-service communication.

Compensation Range:

$139,200.00 - $174,000.00

*This is a remote role

JR: 2026-7623

#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.

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