Staff Engineer (Fleet Performance)

We want people who are passionate about designing and operating secure systems at scale.

As a key member of our fleet performance team, you will spearhead efforts to optimize and enhance core system performance, ensuring our products consistently exceed customer expectations. Your role will be crucial in leveraging AI/ML solutions to scale our rapidly growing infrastructure. Additionally, you'll be responsible for ensuring performance data are both accurate and easily accessible to our users, empowering them with transparent insights into our systems' capabilities and efficiency. This commitment to data transparency and accuracy will be fundamental in building trust and driving informed decision-making across the organization.

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Develop and implement comprehensive performance metrics, analysis tools, and reporting systems
• Lead initiatives to enhance shared infrastructure, balancing performance optimization with rigorous security standards
• Collaborate with hardware engineering teams and vendors to continuously validate GPU fabric performance
• Engage with the open-source Linux community to advance virtualization technologies and integrate them into our fleet
• Conduct in-depth performance analysis of the Linux kernel, virtualization layer, storage, and network stack to devise optimization strategies
• Identify system bottlenecks proactively and drive optimizations across the hypervisor software stack
• Work cross-functionally to harness new performance capabilities from evolving hardware architectures
• Enhance test frameworks, harnesses, and pipelines to ensure robust performance validation
• Investigate and resolve virtual machine downtime and performance issues in our production environment
• Participate in on-call rotations as needed to support system reliability

What We’ll Expect From You:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics or Computer/Electrical Engineering or equivalent work experience
• Extensive knowledge of Linux kernel, hypervisors, and open-source operating systems
• 7+ experience with performance measurement tools such as profilers, eBPF, XDP, fio, TPCC, MLPerf, and NCCL
• 5+ years developing strategies for managing, monitoring, and analyzing infrastructure, applications and services
• Strong proficiency in Go, Python, and/or Ruby
• Deep understanding of kernel performance aspects, including scheduling, context switching, and hardware acceleration
• Expertise in distributed systems performance, including tracing and debugging methodologies
• Knowledge of GPU technology, GPU fabrics, and programming for multi-GPU workloads
• Demonstrated ability to solve complex problems at scale
• Strong security mindset with proactive approach to implementing best practices
• Excellent cross-team collaboration and communication skills
• Leadership experience in skills development and mentorship
• Professional-level written and spoken English with strong presentation abilities

Nice to Have:

• Experience with observability platforms such as Splunk, Prometheus, Grafana, Elastic, or Dynatrace
• Proficiency in C programming language
• Proficiency in compiler-level performance optimization techniques
• Experience with Chef, AWX, and/or Kubernetes
• Familiarity with x86_64 and/or ARM architectures
• Successful history of upstreaming Linux kernel patches
• In-depth knowledge of at least one Linux subsystem (CPU scheduling, memory management, file system, I/O, etc.)
• Experience in developing and deploying ML-based solutions for anomaly detection and dynamic load balancing

This role offers a unique opportunity to drive performance optimization at scale, leveraging cutting-edge technologies and AI/ML solutions to tackle complex infrastructure challenges. As our systems rapidly expand, you'll play a pivotal role in ensuring our architecture remains efficient, resilient, and future-ready.

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 your overall well-being, from one-time work from home stipend to wellness allowance 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 between $230,000 - $270,000 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. 
• We value diversity and inclusion. We are an equal-opportunity employer, and recognize that diversity of thought and background builds stronger teams and products to serve our customers. We approach diversity and inclusion seriously and thoughtfully. 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.

*This is a remote role

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