Senior Software Engineer II, Compute

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.

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer II who is passionate about building features that you and your peers will love.

As a Senior Software Engineer II, reporting to Mavis Franco (Manager, Software Engineering) at DigitalOcean, you will join a dynamic team dedicated to revolutionizing cloud computing and AI. In this high-impact IC4 role, you will apply advanced subject-matter expertise across Go, high-throughput microservices, distributed control planes, and low-level virtualization primitives. You will bridge high-level API design with kernel-level performance, lead complex technical projects across system boundaries, and mentor engineers to elevate engineering standards across the Compute ecosystem.

• Architect and implement scalable distributed control plane microservices in Go in order to orchestrate low-latency compute workloads across hypervisor nodes.

• Design robust gRPC interfaces and service contracts in order to enable high-throughput, fault-tolerant communication across platform boundaries.

• Deconstruct complex customer and system requirements into decoupled technical architectures in order to drive predictable value delivery across cross-functional workstreams.

• Optimize Linux kernel interactions and virtualization subsystems (e.g., KVM, Firecracker, cgroups) in order to maximize compute performance and system uptime.

• Mentor multiple team members through technical guidance, architectural reviews, and code quality standards in order to accelerate team growth and execution velocity.

• Establish operational observability, failover strategies, and automated recovery frameworks in order to minimize platform toil and resolve critical production incidents.

• Participate in on-call operational support and continuous improvement retrospectives in order to maintain world-class availability across global data centers.

• Experience with Go, high-throughput microservices architecture, gRPC, and building distributed control planes or low-latency infrastructure APIs.

• Experience with low-level systems engineering, Linux kernel concepts, containerization, or hypervisor-level virtualization (e.g., KVM, Firecracker, eBPF, cgroups).

• A deep understanding of distributed systems principles, concurrency patterns, failure modes, and performance optimization in Linux environments.

• Strong relational intelligence and communication skills, with a track record of driving complex cross-team technical projects and mentoring engineers.

• Growth Mindset focused with a desire to learn, an appetite for feedback, and a "leave it better than you found it" attitude towards system architecture and code maintainability.

• $167,200 - $209,000

*This is a hybrid role

JR: 2026-8132

#LI-Hybrid

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