Senior Engineer, Inference Data Plane

DigitalOcean

Senior Engineer designing and developing distributed services for AI infrastructure at DigitalOcean. Leading operational strategies and collaborating with cross-functional teams in a fast-paced environment.

Posted 4/24/2026full-timeRemote • California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Texas • 🇺🇸 United StatesSenior💰 $139,200 - $174,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

CloudGRPCKubernetesNFSPython

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Drive the design and development of distributed services within our AI Infrastructure ecosystem.
Create, refine, and assess system design proposals for our high-scale, multi-tenant inference cloud ecosystem.
Lead the operational strategy for critical services, defining SLOs and leveraging advanced observability.
Partner deeply with Product Management, TPMs, and Engineering Management peers to align technical roadmaps with business priorities.
Work on new architecture initiatives that enable fleet optimization and help evolve DigitalOcean into a market leader.

Requirements

What you’ll need

Deep experience with distributed and cloud services, including messaging systems, databases, and infrastructure as code, observability, and security.
Advanced knowledge of cloud networking (VPCs, Load Balancers), containerization (Kubernetes), and cloud storage (block, object, NFS).
Proven experience building AI/ML products, specifically focusing on Gen AI platforms, LLM hosting, and inference workflows.
Significant experience running customer-facing, high-availability services across multiple regions.
Experience integrating and building with open-source software and a bias for technical ownership.
Expert proficiency in GoLang or Python and familiarity with gRPC for service-to-service communication.

Benefits

Comp & perks

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 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.
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.

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

distributed servicescloud servicesmessaging systemsdatabasesinfrastructure as codeobservabilitycloud networkingcontainerizationGoLangPython

Soft Skills

leadershipstrategic planningcollaborationcommunication