Principal Infrastructure Architect

DigitalOcean

Principal Infrastructure Architect at DigitalOcean managing CPU, GPU, and storage platforms. Leading infrastructure technologies and collaborating with engineering teams to drive innovation.

Posted 6/17/2026full-timeRemote • California • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $184,000 - $231,000 per yearWebsite

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Defining and owning DigitalOcean's hardware architectures for next-generation compute environments across our CPU, GPU, Storage, and Infrastructure Server SKU products, navigating shifts in technology, networking topologies, and AI/ML requirements.
Serving as DigitalOcean's primary technical stakeholder for infrastructure technologies partnering with SMEs in the Product and Hardware Engineering organization.
Providing leadership and guidance as a primary stakeholder in the hardware selection and qualification process.
Evangelizing emerging technical concepts to senior leadership to inform product and business strategies.
Architecting end-to-end server designs with vendors and partner teams to support a wide variety of CPU, GPU, and other emerging workloads.
Architecting end-to-end storage topologies with vendor teams to support diverse workloads across performance, capacity, and archival tiers, moving from direct-attached to disaggregated and software-defined storage.
Leading proof-of-concept (PoC) initiatives for emerging infrastructure technologies and transitioning successful pilots into global deployment standards.
Mentor engineers at all levels and contribute to a culture of technical excellence, inclusivity, and impact.
Represent DigitalOcean in the broader community attending conferences, contributing to papers and presentations.

Requirements

What you’ll need

10+ years of experience in server architecture, storage architecture, infrastructure engineering, or a related field, with a track record of owning and deploying designs at scale.
Deep expertise in server and storage hardware platforms with strong working knowledge of compute technologies across the spectrum—from commodity CPU servers to rack scale GPU and xPU platforms.
Working experience of driving AI/ML hardware roadmaps and the ability to translate evolving silicon, accelerator, memory, and storage trends into future-proofed platform designs.
Knowledge of emerging and non-traditional hardware approaches such as CXL memory pooling, DPUs/SmartNICs, disaggregated storage, and computational storage.
Demonstrated ability to lead proof-of-concept initiatives and scale successful pilots into global deployment standards.
Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, partnering with technical and business teams along with external vendors and partners.
Excellent communication and leadership skills, including mentoring engineers and representing the company externally at conferences and through technical papers.

Benefits

Comp & perks

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 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 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.

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Hard Skills & Tools

server architecturestorage architectureinfrastructure engineeringAI/ML hardware roadmapsCXL memory poolingDPUsSmartNICsdisaggregated storagecomputational storageproof-of-concept initiatives

Soft Skills

leadershipmentoringcross-functional collaborationcommunicationtechnical excellenceinclusivityimpact