Lead Principal Core Infrastructure Engineer

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is growing rapidly as one of the world’s major cloud platforms. The expansion of AI, machine learning, and traditional enterprise workloads is creating new demands for cloud infrastructure, from silicon to system software to the boundary where hardware and software meet.

The Virtual Networking Data Plane team within OCI builds highly customizable Virtual Cloud Network data plane services on industry-leading programmable SmartNICs and DPUs. Our work enables predictable performance, secure isolation, and high availability for OCI customers at cloud scale.

We are in the middle of a generational transformation in cloud infrastructure, and we are looking for exceptional systems engineering talent to help shape what comes next.

This is an exciting opportunity for a hands-on system software engineer who enjoys building low-level software close to the hardware. Domain-specific processors and programmable hardware accelerators are becoming central to modern cloud infrastructure, especially as data centers evolve to support AI-ready, efficient, and sustainable computing workloads.

In this role, you will help develop software for next-generation programmable DPUs that are foundational to OCI’s networking platform. You will work on performance-critical systems where Linux internals, hardware-software co-design, and high-performance networking come together.

Disclaimer:

Certain U.S. based or U.S. customer or client-facing roles may be required to comply with applicable requirements, such as immunization/occupational health mandates, and/or drug testing requirements.

Range and benefit information provided in this posting are specific to the stated locations only

US: Hiring Range in USD from: $146,300 to $306,400 per annum. May be eligible for bonus, equity, and compensation deferral.


Oracle maintains broad salary ranges for its roles in order to account for variations in knowledge, skills, experience, market conditions and locations, as well as reflect Oracle's differing products, industries and lines of business.
Candidates are typically placed into the range based on the preceding factors as well as internal peer equity.

Oracle US offers a comprehensive benefits package which includes the following:
1. Medical, dental, and vision insurance, including expert medical opinion
2. Short term disability and long term disability
3. Life insurance and AD&D
4. Supplemental life insurance (Employee/Spouse/Child)
5. Health care and dependent care Flexible Spending Accounts
6. Pre-tax commuter and parking benefits
7. 401(k) Savings and Investment Plan with company match
8. Paid time off: Flexible Vacation is provided to all eligible employees assigned to a salaried (non-overtime eligible) position. Accrued Vacation is provided to all other employees eligible for vacation benefits. For employees working at least 35 hours per week, the vacation accrual rate is 13 days annually for the first three years of employment and 18 days annually for subsequent years of employment. Vacation accrual is prorated for employees working between 20 and 34 hours per week. Employees working fewer than 20 hours per week are not eligible for vacation.
9. 11 paid holidays
10. Paid sick leave: 72 hours of paid sick leave upon date of hire. Refreshes each calendar year. Unused balance will carry over each year up to a maximum cap of 112 hours.
11. Paid parental leave
12. Adoption assistance
13. Employee Stock Purchase Plan
14. Financial planning and group legal
15. Voluntary benefits including auto, homeowner and pet insurance

The role will generally accept applications for at least three calendar days from the posting date or as long as the job remains posted.
As part of Oracle's onboarding process and consistent with applicable law, US-based employees are required to complete identity verification, which involves the collection and processing of their biometric information. Accommodations to this requirement may be granted following an individualized assessment.

• Architect and implement high performance, highly available system software components – DPDK-based networking stack, hardware abstraction layers, and custom hardware acceleration stacks.

• Leverage C/C++ expertise in building network virtualization, high performance packet processing and protocol parsers.

• Leverage Linux OS expertise to manage memory, scheduling, I/O virtualization, kernel drivers and security features of the DPUs.

• Collaborate with senior architects and peers across Compute, Storage, OS and Security groups across Oracle, to lead and drive project execution.

Why Join Us

You will be part of a team building the foundation of OCI’s next generation cloud networking platform. The work is technically deep, highly impactful, and central to the future of cloud infrastructure. You will have the opportunity to solve challenging systems problems at scale while helping build infrastructure that supports the next wave of AI, enterprise, and cloud-native workloads.

Required Qualifications

• Expertise with systems programming in C, C++, Rust, or similar low-level languages.
• Strong understanding of Linux operating system internals.
• Experience with networking protocols, packet processing, or high-performance network programming.
• Familiarity with embedded systems, SmartNICs, DPUs, programmable hardware accelerators, or hardware-adjacent software development.
• Ability to debug complex software issues across operating system, driver, firmware, and hardware boundaries.
• Strong collaboration skills and the ability to work effectively in a highly technical engineering environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience developing software for SmartNICs, DPUs, NIC drivers, kernel networking, or user-space packet processing frameworks.
• Knowledge of virtualization, cloud networking, SDN, or distributed systems.
• Experience with performance tuning, concurrency, memory management, or low-latency systems.
• Background in hardware-software co-design or close collaboration with silicon, platform, or firmware teams.