What are the responsibilities and job description for the Principal Engineer position at Monument Search Group?
Job Opening: Principal Data Plane Engineer
My client is an international pre-IPO silicon startup with development offices in Boston MA, Durham NC, and San Jose, CA. Named one of the 10 hottest semiconductor startups of 2025, we are developing and delivering revolutionary new silicon devices to address the cloud datacenter core and edge at scale. We are well funded by some of the leading investment firms in the world. Come join our team and be part of revolutionizing the future of the cloud!
About the Role
We are looking for a Principal Dataplane Engineer to join our US software engineering team. In this role, you will be a technical lead for a strategic networking initiative focused on extracting maximum performance from our next-generation silicon. You will design, implement, and optimize dataplane software that interfaces directly with custom hardware pipelines, enabling line-rate packet processing, advanced offloads, and scalable cloud networking features.
As part of this effort, you will work closely with silicon architects, firmware, and control-plane teams, and actively engage with the open-source community to help define and influence dataplane models, APIs, and performance frameworks. Location is flexible between our East Coast offices in Billerica, Massachusetts or Durham, North Carolina.
Required Experience
· Strong understanding of dataplane architectures and high-performance packet processing.
· Experience developing Linux-based dataplane software targeting embedded or server-class CPUs (x86 and/or ARM).
· Expertise in designing low-latency, high-throughput systems with strict performance constraints.
· Ability to translate hardware specifications and networking requirements into efficient, testable dataplane implementations.
· Experience profiling, debugging, and optimizing dataplane code across CPU, memory, and I/O subsystems.
· Proven ability to collaborate closely with hardware, firmware, and control-plane teams.
Desired Experience:
· Hands-on experience with DPDK, including PMDs, RTE Flow, and performance tuning.
· Familiarity with NIC offloads, hardware accelerators, or programmable packet processing pipelines.
· Knowledge of L2/L3 forwarding, encapsulation, and tunneling protocols (Ethernet, VLAN, VXLAN, IP, TCP/UDP).
· Experience with highly available and scalable networking systems.
· Exposure to hardware/software co-simulation, emulation, or FPGA-based validation environments.
· Prior or active contributions to open source dataplane or networking projects.
Required Skills
·Expert-level proficiency in C
·Performance-driven, detail-oriented engineering mindset
· Strong problem-solving and debugging skills
·Self-learner with the ability to ramp quickly on new hardware and architectures
· Team-player with excellent verbal and written communication skills