We are looking for a Senior System Software Engineer, Software Defined Networking to design, build, and operate highly performant and scalable SDN solutions for NVIDIA's AI Clouds hosting GPU-accelerated workloads — including hyperscale multi-node training, inference, cloud gaming, and cloud functions. This role spans the full lifecycle of our SDN stack — from designing and developing new control and data plane software to ensuring operational excellence in production through reliability engineering, CI/CD, observability, and incident response.
What you'll be doing:
Design and develop next-generation multi-tenant cloud SDN control and data plane software (OVS, OVN, OpenFlow)
Build Infrastructure-as-a-Service virtual network orchestration and services using gRPC and REST to support tenant workload security and performance SLAs for BMaaS, VMaaS, and Kubernetes
Drive upstream contributions to OVN-Kubernetes and related open-source projects; Develop software for network observability — monitoring, telemetry, intelligent metering, and performance analysis
Operate and support OVS-OVN based SDN solutions in large-scale NVIDIA AI Cloud environments
Own end-to-end observability for the SDN stack — build and maintain monitoring, alerting, distributed tracing, and dashboarding to ensure real-time insight into network health, performance, and tenant SLAs
Design, enhance, and maintain CI/CD pipelines (GitLab) across Linux host networking, OVS, OVN, and Kubernetes CNIs
Implement GitOps approaches or related experience for secure, seamless integration with cloud infrastructure; Drive reliability through incident management, resource monitoring, and performance tuning
Collaborate with SRE, DevOps, and network engineering teams on production readiness and operational tooling
What we need to see:
BS/MS in Computer Science or related technical field, or a comparable blend of education and relevant experience
5+ years of proven experience in software development for large-scale distributed environments
Expert-level knowledge of OVN, OVS, OpenFlow, and modern network protocols
Strong programming skills in C and Go; advanced scripting in Bash and Python
Deep knowledge of Kubernetes, practical experience deploying and supporting CNIs (OVN-Kubernetes)
Hands-on experience with Infrastructure-as-Code and deployment tools (Ansible, Terraform, ArgoCD, Flux)
Experience designing and operating complex, multi-stage CI/CD pipelines
Hands-on experience developing secure, high-performance services using gRPC and REST with TLS and strong authentication
Strong knowledge of datacenter routing, switching, and Linux host/VM networking
Ways to stand out from the crowd:
Contributions to open-source projects (especially OVS, OVN, OVN-Kubernetes, or other Kubernetes networking projects)
Experience with hardware acceleration (GPU, DPU or equivalent experience) for networking
Practical experience with major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) and hybrid/multi-cloud deployments
SRE/DevOps top-level expertise — on-call, incident management, operations focused on service reliability targets, production ownership
Experience with observability platforms and tools (Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, OpenTelemetry, ELK)
Skills Required
- BS or MS in Computer Science, a related technical field, or comparable education and relevant experience
- 5+ years of software development experience in large-scale distributed environments
- Expert knowledge of OVN, OVS, OpenFlow, and modern network protocols
- Strong programming skills in C and Go
- Advanced Bash and Python scripting skills
- Deep knowledge of Kubernetes and practical experience deploying and supporting CNIs, especially OVN-Kubernetes
- Hands-on experience with Infrastructure-as-Code and deployment tools including Ansible, Terraform, ArgoCD, and Flux
- Experience designing and operating complex, multi-stage CI/CD pipelines
- Hands-on experience developing secure, high-performance gRPC and REST services using TLS and strong authentication
- Strong knowledge of datacenter routing, switching, and Linux host and virtual machine networking
- Open-source contributions, particularly to OVS, OVN, OVN-Kubernetes, or Kubernetes networking projects
- Experience with GPU, DPU, or equivalent hardware acceleration for networking
- Experience with AWS, Azure, GCP, or hybrid and multi-cloud deployments
- Advanced SRE or DevOps experience, including on-call, incident management, reliability targets, and production ownership
- Experience with Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, OpenTelemetry, ELK, or similar observability tools
NVIDIA Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about NVIDIA and has not been reviewed or approved by NVIDIA.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Equity awards and a discounted ESPP are highlighted as core parts of total compensation, enabling employees to share in the company’s success. Stock-based compensation and the two-year lookback ESPP are consistently described as especially valuable.
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Healthcare Strength — Health coverage is portrayed as robust, with comprehensive medical, dental, and vision options alongside mental health support and on-site care resources. Employer HSA contributions and wellness perks reinforce the depth of the offering.
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Retirement Support — Retirement programs are depicted as strong, featuring a meaningful 401(k) match with Roth options and support for Mega Backdoor Roth contributions. These elements position long-term savings as a notable advantage of the total rewards package.
NVIDIA Insights
What We Do
NVIDIA’s invention of the GPU in 1999 sparked the growth of the PC gaming market, redefined modern computer graphics, and revolutionized parallel computing. More recently, GPU deep learning ignited modern AI — the next era of computing — with the GPU acting as the brain of computers, robots, and self-driving cars that can perceive and understand the world. Today, NVIDIA is increasingly known as “the AI computing company.”
