Staff Software Engineer – Network Automation

Posted 23 Days Ago
Be an Early Applicant
Berlin, DEU
In-Office
Expert/Leader
Gaming
The Role
Lead the architecture and development of large-scale network automation platforms, including APIs, Kubernetes controllers, reconciliation workflows, distributed systems, and multi-tenant infrastructure capabilities. Establish engineering standards for testing, observability, deployment safety, migrations, and schema evolution. Provide technical leadership across teams, drive architectural alignment, mentor engineers, and build reliable software that manages global production network infrastructure.
Summary Generated by Built In

Why Sony Interactive Entertainment?

Sony Interactive Entertainment isn’t just the Best Place to Play — it’s also the Best Place to Work. Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) is the company behind the PlayStation brand. As a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation, we’re part of a proud legacy of innovation and excellence. SIE is a dynamic technology company, delivering cutting-edge hardware and network services to more than 100 million people and an entertainment leader, home to some of the most beloved and recognizable intellectual properties (IP) in the world. Our role at SIE is to create and nurture the experiences under the PlayStation brand, a name synonymous with entertainment excellence and creativity.

Role Overview:

We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to help shape and build the next generation of our network automation platforms.

Our challenge is one of scale, complexity and criticality. We operate a massive global network supporting PlayStation Network, spanning more than 40 interconnection locations and 20+ data centres worldwide. Operating infrastructure at this scale safely and efficiently requires us to move beyond specialist-driven workflows and individual automation tools toward reliable, declarative software platforms.

You will help make that transition. You will work on software that turns complex network and infrastructure operations into reliable, API-driven and increasingly self-service capabilities. This includes building control-plane services, declarative APIs and intent-based controllers that manage production infrastructure safely and consistently across our global footprint.

This is a Staff-level engineering role with significant technical influence. You will combine hands-on engineering with setting technical direction: defining architectures, solving complex cross-system and distributed-systems problems, writing designs, driving alignment with senior engineers and architects, and mentoring engineers across the team.

Your work will directly influence how one of the world's largest gaming networks is operated and automated, while establishing engineering patterns and platforms that can be reused across multiple network domains and services.

What you'll be doing:
  • Provide technical leadership and architectural direction for network automation and infrastructure control platforms, treating the self-service network API as a product by working with users and partner teams to define outcomes, establish clear expectations for API behavior and reliability, align on team responsibilities, and ensure those commitments are met.
  • Use domain-driven design with network experts, software engineers and API consumers to establish shared language and bounded contexts, then turn those agreements into versioned, testable contracts.
  • Design and build APIs, services, controllers and reconciliation workflows that manage production infrastructure safely at scale.
  • Build on the Kubernetes API, including custom resources and control loops that continuously converge actual state toward declared intent.
  • Own the operational Kubernetes path: CRD rollout, RBAC and admission, controller health, Helm packaging, deployment drift and incident diagnosis.
  • Design distributed workflows that operate correctly under eventual consistency, at-least-once delivery, concurrent writes and partial failure, with idempotency and safe recovery as fundamental properties.
  • Design stable APIs, schemas and data models used across team boundaries, including versioning and backwards compatibility.
  • Develop patterns for multi-tenant infrastructure platforms, including tenant isolation, authorization, policy enforcement and safe automation boundaries.
  • Establish strong approaches to testing, observability and change safety for software that changes live infrastructure.
  • Improve software delivery practices through automated CI gates, versioned artifacts, controlled promotion, and safe deployment and recovery strategies.
  • Lead complex migrations and modernization of existing automation, services and data models, evaluating when components should be evolved, replaced or rewritten, and ensuring safe coexistence, behavioral compatibility and retirement of legacy paths.
  • Drive technical alignment across software engineering, networking, operations and architecture teams; lead decisions within your area of accountability, contribute constructively to decisions owned by others, and make technology choices based on long-term company and product value.
  • Mentor engineers, lead technical and design reviews, and raise software engineering standards across the wider organization.
What we're looking for:

Must have

  • Deep expertise in a backend language such as Python, Go, Rust or Java, including asynchronous concurrency, static typing, data modelling and validation, API development, packaging and tooling.
  • Strong experience building Kubernetes controllers or operators, including custom resources and reconciliation/control-loop patterns.
  • Strong experience building event-driven distributed systems, particularly eventual consistency, at-least-once delivery, idempotency, optimistic concurrency and partial-failure handling.
  • Experience designing and building self-service, multi-tenant platforms, including tenant isolation, policy and access control.
  • Strong API and schema design skills, including versioning and schema evolution for interfaces consumed by other teams and systems.
  • Demonstrated technical leadership across team boundaries, including driving architectural designs, building agreement among senior technical stakeholders and mentoring other engineers.
  • A track record of taking ambiguous, technically complex problems from architecture through to reliable production systems that manage large-scale infrastructure, such as networks, compute or cloud resources.
Nice to have
  • Networking fundamentals, particularly BGP, IP fabrics and VXLAN/EVPN/L3VPN.
  • Working knowledge of Go, sufficient to understand and contribute to adjacent services and controllers.
  • Experience designing testing and observability strategies for production infrastructure automation, including systems and backends that cannot be fully reproduced in CI.
  • Experience with graph databases, or with source-of-truth systems that model infrastructure and its relationships.
The impact

You will help establish the architecture and engineering practices behind a new generation of network automation, moving from individual scripts and specialist-driven workflows toward declarative, model-driven and reliable platforms.

At Staff level, your impact is expected to extend beyond the code you personally deliver. You will help shape the APIs and designs other teams build on, develop other engineers, and establish technical patterns that can be reused across multiple network domains and services.

Please note, Sony Interactive Entertainment conducts background checks at the offer stage for all new employees (which may include criminal background checks for some roles) and will need to process personal information to support these checks.

Please refer to our Candidate Privacy Notice for more information about what personal information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and your data protection rights.

Equal Opportunity Statement:

Sony is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All persons will receive consideration for employment without regard to gender (including gender identity, gender expression and gender reassignment), race (including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin), religion or belief, marital or civil partnership status, disability, age, sexual orientation, pregnancy, maternity or parental status, trade union membership or membership in any other legally protected category.

We strive to create an inclusive environment, empower employees and embrace diversity. We encourage everyone to respond. 

Sony Interactive Entertainment is a Fair Chance employer and qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records will be considered for employment.


Skills Required

  • Deep expertise in a backend language such as Python, Go, Rust, or Java, including asynchronous concurrency, static typing, data modeling, validation, API development, packaging, and tooling.
  • Strong experience building Kubernetes controllers or operators, including custom resources and reconciliation or control-loop patterns.
  • Strong experience building event-driven distributed systems using eventual consistency, at-least-once delivery, idempotency, optimistic concurrency, and partial-failure handling.
  • Experience designing and building self-service, multi-tenant platforms with tenant isolation, policy enforcement, and access control.
  • Strong API and schema design skills, including versioning and schema evolution for interfaces consumed by other teams and systems.
  • Demonstrated technical leadership across team boundaries, including architectural design, stakeholder alignment, and mentoring engineers.
  • Experience taking ambiguous, technically complex infrastructure problems from architecture through reliable production systems at scale.
  • Networking fundamentals, particularly BGP, IP fabrics, VXLAN, EVPN, and L3VPN.
  • Working knowledge of Go sufficient to understand and contribute to adjacent services and controllers.
  • Experience designing testing and observability strategies for production infrastructure automation that cannot be fully reproduced in CI.
  • Experience with graph databases or source-of-truth systems that model infrastructure and its relationships.

PlayStation Compensation & Benefits Highlights

The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about PlayStation and has not been reviewed or approved by PlayStation.

  • Healthcare Strength — The package includes medical, dental, vision, prescription coverage, mental wellbeing programs, disability, and life insurance. Feedback suggests coverage breadth is a consistent strength that helps anchor overall comp satisfaction.
  • Retirement Support — U.S. offerings include a 401(k) with a company match along with student‑loan repayment and a college‑savings plan match. These financial supports are positioned as strong additions to total compensation.
  • Parental & Family Support — Offerings include paid parental and family‑care leave, fertility and family‑forming support, backup care, and child developmental resources. Feedback suggests these programs are valued and contribute to a well‑rounded package.

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The Company
HQ: San Mateo, CA
8,768 Employees
Year Founded: 1994

What We Do

PlayStation has been at the forefront of interactive and digital entertainment since the debut of our first console in 1994. Our products delight millions across the world through incredible games, cutting edge experiences and access to many types of media. This commitment to amazing our fans is at the core of who we are and one we share with Sony Corporation, internationally known as a leader in music, movies and consumer electronics. We can only achieve this goal by welcoming talented people and empowering them to do their best work. From game developers to data scientists, software engineers to cybersecurity experts, marketing to accounting and finance professionals, we’re always looking for talented people who share a passion for creating and our commitment to delivering amazement.

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