Senior Software Engineer - Network Protocols & Data Plane

About this job

As a Senior Software Engineer for Network Protocols & Data Plane at Vectra in Bengaluru, you will focus on expanding and modernizing the network data-plane systems that ingest, process, parse, enrich, and deliver network metadata. A normal day involves designing core data-plane capabilities, optimizing packet-processing architecture on Linux, handling protocol parsing, diagnosing performance or concurrency issues, and building test harnesses that validate data-plane behavior end-to-end. The team builds high-performance systems for the Vectra AI Platform, which provides integrated threat detection and response for hybrid and multi-cloud enterprises using patented Attack Signal Intelligence. You will operate close to Linux, packet capture, hardware constraints, and performance limits while collaborating with security, product, and data science teams.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, test, and maintain core network data-plane capabilities including packet processing and protocol parsing.
• Improve scalable network data-path architecture on Linux for packet ingestion, traffic steering, and metadata modeling.
• Use AI-assisted development tools thoughtfully to accelerate investigation, implementation, and test generation.
• Work across parsing, serialization, metadata modeling, validation, and downstream platform integration.
• Build feedback loops and test harnesses that validate data-plane behavior end-to-end.
• Diagnose correctness, performance, memory, concurrency, and reliability issues in complex packet-processing systems.
• Collaborate with Product, Security Research, Data Science, and engineering teams to deliver technical outcomes.

Requirements

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• 5+ years of production C++ experience in systems, infrastructure, or performance-sensitive environments.
• Meaningful Rust experience or demonstrated ability to build production-quality systems in a memory-safe systems language.
• Strong Python coding, debugging, automation, and code review experience.
• Experience developing and debugging software on Debian-based Linux or similar environments.
• Hands-on protocol experience with packet captures, Wireshark, and parsing or serialization logic.
• Experience with data-path technologies such as DPDK, XDP/AF_XDP, or kernel-bypass networking.
• Understanding of NIC queues, RSS, tunneling, offloads, routing, and traffic steering.

Good to have

• Experience building protocol parsers, network telemetry systems, or high-throughput data pipelines.
• Experience with parser validation, fuzzing, golden datasets, packet replay frameworks, or property-based testing.
• Familiarity with eBPF, Suricata, Zeek, or tuning systems across CPU, memory, NUMA, and network boundaries.
• Experience designing schemas or metadata models consumed by downstream analytics or detection workflows.
• Experience with CI/CD, Jenkins, and Git-based development workflows.

Who should apply

This role suits experienced software engineers who possess deep systems programming depth and hands-on networking expertise in performance-sensitive environments. Ideal candidates are hands-on builders energized by hard systems problems, comfortable with Linux, hardware constraints, and packet capture. Applicants should have a strong ownership mindset, be able to clarify ambiguity, and know how to use AI tools responsibly as part of their workflow. Since this is a senior position requiring extensive professional software engineering background, freshers should not apply.

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