Principal Software Engineer

Description Drive. Nets is a leader in high-scale disaggregated networking solutions. Founded in 2015, Drive. Nets modernizes the way service providers, cloud providers, and hyperscalers build networks. Supporting the largest network in the world, more than half of AT&T’s backbone traffic runs on Drive. Nets’ Network Cloud open disaggregated architecture.

Having raised $587 million in three funding rounds, Drive. Nets is disrupting the networking market with high-scale architectures and cloud-native platforms. We are seeking people who want to make an impact on the world’s leading communication networks and have experience building large-scale distributed systems. The Group The Management Plane group builds high-performance customer interfaces and core frameworks for configuring and monitoring large-scale distributed systems.

This includes a distributed transaction framework, large-scale operational state monitoring and telemetry, and APIs for interacting with the system’s configuration and runtime state. The group serves both external customers and internal R&D teams that integrate their features into the product. Meeting the system’s scale and performance requirements often requires more than incremental improvements.

The group frequently undertakes large-scale improvements, deep optimizations, and systemic architectural redesigns to ensure performance and reliability in a resource-constrained environment. The Role We are seeking an exceptional software engineer with the imagination to challenge existing designs and the discipline to implement those ideas in production-quality systems.

This role requires a passion for software development, strong system design skills, and deep expertise in coding and debugging. The ideal candidate is also a natural mentor, capable of guiding and developing junior engineers. This position is for a Principal Software Engineer with extensive experience in databases and systems algorithms for distributed data platforms (databases, replication, HA, data-traversal, deduplication), who can lead the design and implementation of large, complex initiatives end to end.

Requirements

7+ years of professional experience as a software engineer, building and maintaining production systems. Demonstrated ability to lead the design and implementation of complex systems. Proven experience designing and implementing classical algorithms (not AI/ML) and data structures in production environments. Strong experience with database systems, both SQL and NoSQL, including schema design and performance considerations.

Ability to quickly learn new technologies and programming languages and apply them effectively to complex systems. Strong proficiency in C++ and Python. Experience with Rust — an advantage. BSc in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.