Cloud/Linux Networking Software Engineer (L5) - Compute Engineering

About Netflix:

Netflix is one of the world's leading streaming entertainment services with over 260 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, films and games across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members can play, pause and resume watching as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, and can change their plans at any time.

Netflix has been on the leading edge of the cloud since beginning the migration to AWS 15 years ago and runs one of the largest Cloud footprints around. The Cloud Engineering organization exists to manage that massive scale, constantly innovating to increase fleet-wide agility, efficiency, and reliability of the Netflix cloud infrastructure. We build, operate, and maintain Compute, Network and Storage services so that developers at Netflix can rely on foundational building blocks when entertaining hundreds of millions of customers around the world.

About the Role:

We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated core Linux OS engineer to join our dynamic Compute team. The ideal candidate will have experience in AWS and Linux networking, kernel maintenance, a deep understanding of operating system internals, and expertise in Linux's process bootstrapping and isolation to support Netflix's Base OS powering EC2 images and its container orchestrator. You will focus on optimizing our AWS and Linux networking stacks for container performance and reliability, ensuring optimal performance for Netflix's cloud-based applications.

Your stunning colleagues are top of their field and innovators at heart, with some innovations saving compute costs in excess of $100M. If you have a passion for innovation, AWS, Linux, and solving hard problems, we want to talk to you!

Key Responsibilities

• Performance Optimization: Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks in the Linux and AWS networking stacks, optimizing network traffic for containers in a Kubernetes infrastructure to enable efficient scaling and lower networking costs. Optimizing our entire server fleet to get us every last usable CPU  cycle executing on our latency-sensitive and throughput-sensitive workloads

• System Integration: Integrate kernel changes with user-space applications and container runtime, ensuring seamless operation within the Netflix ecosystem.

• Linux Plumbing & Kernel Engineering: Maintain Linux kernel and core userspace subsystems including submitting patches upstream against latest stable releases, with a focus on networking.

• Debugging and Troubleshooting: Diagnose and fix networking-related issues in the Linux kernel and related software.

• Documentation: Create and maintain comprehensive documentation for developed kernel code and procedures.

• Collaboration: Work closely with our internal customers, software developers, and other stakeholders to align kernel development with overall project goals, including customer requirements for GPU-based solutions and other specialized needs.

• Open Source Contribution: Contribute to the FOSS community, including the Linux kernel, through code submissions, bug fixes, and participation in discussions.

• Presentation: Deliver write-ups, blog posts e.g. submissions to LWN.net, and presentations at conferences such as Linux Plumber’s to engage the community in Netflix Linux engineering.

• Operational Excellence: Maintain and improve the operation of our highly-scalable compute infrastructure by applying engineering best practices and providing first-class on-call support.

Desired Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.

• Minimum of 5 years of experience in core Linux maintenance and engineering and 7 years total industry experience.

• Cloud Network Engineering on a major cloud provider platform at scale, preferably AWS.

• Expertise in the full Linux network stack, including network packet flow, sockets, system calls in the kernel, and low-level networking (TCP/IP, IPv6, IPv4).

• Strong understanding of kernel-space vs. user-space.

• Debugging and tools (such as GDB, perf, and ftrace).

• Knowledge of kernel subsystems such as memory management, process management, file systems, and storage.

• Experience with tools for network performance analysis.

• Deeply proficient in C programming.

• Experience optimizing performance on Linux hosts with dozens to hundreds of CPU cores.

• Strong problem-solving abilities and analytical skills.

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.

• Ability to work independently as well as part of a team.

• Attention to detail and a commitment to delivering high-quality code.

You will thrive in the role if:

• You thrive in ambiguity; complex and fuzzy requirements are more common than clearly defined customer expectations.

• You take incremental steps toward solving big problems; test-and-learn approaches work better than heads-down development.

• You are independent and self driven; progress is often self-directed by teams & individuals.

• Your bedtime reading consists of technology blogs such as: “Debugging a FUSE deadlock in the Linux kernel”, “Investigation of a Cross-regional Network Performance Issue” and “Talking IPv4 to IPv6 without NAT”

• You’ve read about Netflix’s culture and think you would thrive here.

Our compensation structure consists solely of an annual salary; we do not have bonuses. You choose each year how much of your compensation you want in salary versus stock options. To determine your personal top of market compensation, we rely on market indicators and consider your specific job family, background, skills, and experience to determine your compensation in the market range. The range for this role is $100,000 - $720,000.

Netflix provides comprehensive benefits including Health Plans, Mental Health support, a 401(k) Retirement Plan with employer match, Stock Option Program, Disability Programs, Health Savings and Flexible Spending Accounts, Family-forming benefits, and Life and Serious Injury Benefits. We also offer paid leave of absence programs.  Full-time hourly employees accrue 35 days annually for paid time off to be used for vacation, holidays, and sick paid time off. Full-time salaried employees are immediately entitled to flexible time off. See more detail about our Benefits here.

Netflix is a unique culture and environment.  Learn more here.

We are an equal-opportunity employer and celebrate diversity, recognizing that diversity of thought and background builds stronger teams. 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.