Staff Software Engineer - Network Protocols & Data Plane

About this job

The Staff Software Engineer for Network Protocols & Data Plane at Vectra in Bengaluru focuses on expanding and modernizing high-performance network data-plane systems. Vectra develops an AI-driven threat detection and response platform for hybrid and multi-cloud environments. A normal day in this role involves designing and implementing packet processing systems, parsing network protocols, extracting metadata, and delivering data reliably at production scale on Linux. Engineers work closely with packet capture, hardware constraints, and performance limits while using AI-assisted development tools to accelerate implementation and testing. The team builds the critical architecture that ingests, processes, and steers network traffic to empower security teams in detecting advanced cyber-attacks.

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 covering packet ingestion, traffic steering, and metadata modeling.
• Use AI-assisted development tools thoughtfully to accelerate investigation, implementation, test generation, and code review.
• Build feedback loops and test harnesses that validate data-plane behavior end-to-end beyond isolated tests.
• Diagnose correctness, performance, memory, concurrency, and reliability issues in complex packet-processing systems.
• Collaborate with Product, Security Research, and Data Science teams to turn platform needs into technical outcomes.
• Contribute to technical direction, design reviews, and engineering standards for network data-plane development.
• Lead data-plane designs, mentor engineers, and help grow durable technical ownership within the India team.

Requirements

• 10+ years or equivalent technical leadership experience.
• 5+ years of production C++ experience in systems, infrastructure, or networking environments.
• Meaningful Rust experience or demonstrated ability to build production-quality systems in memory-safe languages.
• Strong Python coding, debugging, automation, and code review experience.
• Experience developing and debugging software on Debian-based Linux or similar Linux environments.
• Hands-on protocol experience including inspecting packet captures and implementing parsing logic.
• Experience with substantial data-path technologies such as DPDK, XDP/AF_XDP, or kernel-bypass networking.
• Systems programming depth across Linux networking internals, memory ownership, and concurrency.

Good to have

• Experience building protocol parsers, packet-processing systems, or network telemetry systems.
• Experience with parser validation, fuzzing, golden datasets, or packet replay frameworks.
• Familiarity with eBPF, Suricata, Zeek, or similar systems.
• Prior Staff+ ownership of a critical production data path or distributed systems component.
• Experience designing schemas or metadata models consumed by downstream analytics and detection workflows.

Who should apply

This role suits senior, AI-forward engineers and hands-on builders with extensive systems engineering depth and networking experience. Candidates should be comfortable working close to Linux, hardware constraints, and performance limits while managing complex packet-processing architectures. Freshers should not apply, as this position requires substantial industry experience including 10+ years in technical leadership and senior C++ production backgrounds. Applicants must possess a strong ownership mindset, a collaborative approach across distributed teams, and the ability to mentor others and guide technical direction.

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