Senior Software Engineer – Virtualization

DigitalOcean

Senior Software Engineer II developing and implementing IT systems for DigitalOcean's core virtualization product. Collaborating across teams to ensure reliable, high-performance cloud services.

Posted 6/19/2026full-timeSeattle • Washington • 🇺🇸 United StatesSenior💰 $167,000 - $209,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

ChefGoKubernetesLinuxOpen SourcePythonRuby

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Design, develop, test, and implement the IT systems underlying DigitalOcean's core virtual machine ("Droplet") product.
Work with DigitalOcean's Observability teams to collect and analyze metrics regarding DigitalOcean's products and infrastructure; utilize this data to improve DigitalOcean's products and services.
Engage in peer reviews for suggested changes to DigitalOcean systems.
Contribute to retrospectives enabling DigitalOcean to continuously improve software engineering processes in an agile manner.
Develop and lead execution of test plans in order to allow DigitalOcean to continue to provide reliable service to customers and ensure any customer-impacting incidents will not be repeated.
Maintain DigitalOcean's existing low-level virtual machine stack, while preparing it to support future software updates and new hardware.
Accelerate the virtualization of next generation GPU enabled platforms that power AI/ML workloads.
Work with hardware engineering teams and vendors to validate new hardware. Optimize performance while maintaining DO’s high security standards.
Collaborate with open source Linux, QEMU and libvirt communities to drive the evolution of Linux virtualization technologies and incorporate them into the DO fleet.
Work with cross team partners such as product management to unlock new capabilities within our virtualization stack with evolving hardware.
Backport, build, and deploy software patches in order to support new features, backport bug fixes, and resolve security issues.
Suggest and implement improvements to our code release pipelines.
Contribute to a regular on-call rotation schedule.

Requirements

What you’ll need

Strong understanding of Linux based operating systems; comfortable developing and operating software on Linux.
Strong proficiency in C.
Proven track record of solving problems at scale. You’ll be involved in driving homogenization across the fleet while making sustainable decisions for the organization moving forward.
A strong security mindset. You are proactive when it comes to identifying and implementing security best practices in your domain.
You are a terrific cross team collaborator. So much of this role involves interactions with other engineers and teams.
Deep experience with the internals of QEMU, KVM, Linux kernel and libvirt.
Experience with Debian packaging.
Experience with Go, Python, and/or Ruby.
Experience with Chef, AWX, and/or Kubernetes.
Experience with GPU virtualization.
Experience with Firecracker microVMs.

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.
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.
Salary range 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.
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

CGoPythonRubyLinuxQEMUKVMlibvirtDebian packagingGPU virtualization

Soft Skills

problem solvingcollaborationsecurity mindsetagile methodologypeer reviewcontinuous improvementcommunication