Principal Software Engineer - Networking

Microsoft is developing the next generation of Azure Kubernetes Service through the AKS Flex team. The Principal Software Engineer will own networking architecture for AKS Flex and Unbounded, designing multi-site connectivity, high-performance dataplanes, secure communication, and reliable networking infrastructure for distributed Kubernetes, GPU, and AI workloads.

Responsibilities:

• Own the networking architecture for flex nodes and Unbounded, and help define the multi-year technical roadmap for AKS Flex in partnership with product and engineering leadership
• Lead cross-organization design efforts spanning AKS, Azure networking, compute, and identity, driving alignment on interfaces, tradeoffs, and sequencing
• Build multi-site networking that gives pods transparent connectivity across sites, using encrypted overlays (e.g., WireGuard), tunneling (GENEVE, VXLAN, IPIP), direct L3 routing, BGP, and eBPF dataplanes
• Design networking for nodes that live far from their control plane, handling high and variable latency, intermittent connectivity, partial partitions, NAT traversal, and secure communication with the API server
• Drive the performance, scale, and reliability of the networking dataplane and control plane across a global fleet, including throughput, latency, encryption overhead, and route and policy scale
• Integrate high-performance fabrics such as InfiniBand and RDMA for distributed AI training and inference across heterogeneous and remote hardware
• Participate in production operations and on-call rotations, turning operational learnings into durable engineering improvements
• Partner across AKS and Azure teams to deliver secure, compliant, and resilient infrastructure

Requirements:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, Go, Rust, C, C++, C#, Java, or Python
  • OR equivalent experience
• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role
• Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, Go, Rust, C, C++, C#, Java, or Python
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, Go, Rust, C, C++, C#, Java, or Python
  • OR equivalent experience
• Experience with Linux or similar Unix-like server environments
  • OR equivalent experience
• Experience leading the architecture, design, and delivery of large-scale networking or distributed systems
  • OR equivalent experience
• Deep understanding of networking across data center, overlay, and high-performance fabrics, such as InfiniBand, RDMA and MRC, ESUN, VXLAN, GENEVE, WireGuard, BGP, and eBPF-based dataplanes (e.g., Cilium)
• Deep understanding of the Linux networking stack, including routing, netfilter/nftables, XDP, and kernel networking performance
• Experience with Containers, Kubernetes, or other cloud-native technologies, including building controllers and CRDs
• Recognized maintainer or leadership role in Kubernetes, Cilium, or other CNCF or networking open-source projects
• Experience with CI/CD tools and processes, including but not limited to GitHub, Azure DevOps, or GitLab