Senior System Software Engineer, Software Defined Networking

NVIDIA is hiring a Senior System Software Engineer, Software Defined Networking in Santa Clara, United States. It pays $184k-$288k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on NVIDIA.

Level's read on this job

Level rates this software engineer role Little AI ●○○○: aI is not part of the work.
Pay on this posting starts 10% higher than the typical software engineer posting on Level.
Level classes it as a senior role.
NVIDIA has 2,600+ other open roles on Level.

AI in this role

We are looking for a Senior System Software Engineer, Software Defined Networking to design, build, and operate highly performant and scalable SDN solutions for NVIDIA's AI Clouds hosting GPU-accelerated workloads — including hyperscale multi-node training, inference, cloud gaming, and cloud functions.

This role spans the full lifecycle of our SDN stack — from designing and developing new control and data plane software to ensuring operational excellence in production through reliability engineering, CI/CD, observability, and incident response.

What you'll be doing:

Design and develop next-generation multi-tenant cloud SDN control and data plane software (OVS, OVN, OpenFlow)
Build Infrastructure-as-a-Service virtual network orchestration and services using gRPC and REST to support tenant workload security and performance SLAs for BMaaS, VMaaS, and Kubernetes
Drive upstream contributions to OVN-Kubernetes and related open-source projects
Develop software for network observability — monitoring, telemetry, intelligent metering, and performance analysis
Operate and support OVS-OVN based SDN solutions in large-scale NVIDIA AI Cloud environments
Own end-to-end observability for the SDN stack — build and maintain monitoring, alerting, distributed tracing, and dashboarding to ensure real-time insight into network health, performance, and tenant SLAs
Design, enhance, and maintain CI/CD pipelines (GitLab) across Linux host networking, OVS, OVN, and Kubernetes CNIs
Implement GitOps approaches or related experience for secure, seamless integration with cloud infrastructure
Drive reliability through incident management, resource monitoring, and performance tuning
Collaborate with SRE, DevOps, and network engineering teams on production readiness and operational tooling

What we need to see:

BS/MS in Computer Science or related technical field, or equivalent experience
8+ years of proven experience in software development for large-scale distributed environments
Expert-level knowledge of OVN, OVS, OpenFlow, and modern network protocols
Strong programming skills in C and Go; advanced scripting in Bash and Python
Deep knowledge of Kubernetes, practical experience deploying and supporting CNIs (OVN-Kubernetes)
Hands-on experience with Infrastructure-as-Code and deployment tools (Ansible, Terraform, ArgoCD, Flux)
Experience designing and operating complex, multi-stage CI/CD pipelines
Hands-on experience developing secure, high-performance services using gRPC and REST with TLS and strong authentication
Strong knowledge of datacenter routing, switching, and Linux host/VM networking

Ways to stand out from the crowd:

Contributions to open-source projects (especially OVS, OVN, OVN-Kubernetes, or other Kubernetes networking projects)
Experience with hardware acceleration (GPU, DPU or equivalent experience) for networking
Practical experience with major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) and hybrid/multi-cloud deployments
SRE/DevOps top-level expertise — on-call, incident management, operations focused on service reliability targets, production ownership
Experience with observability platforms and tools (Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, OpenTelemetry, ELK)

With a competitive salary package and benefits, NVIDIA is widely considered to be one of the technology world’s most desirable employers. We have some of the most forward-thinking and hardworking people in the world working for us. Are you a creative and autonomous Systems Software Engineer who loves challenges? Do you have a genuine passion for advancing the state of Networking, SDN, and Cloud Networking across a variety of industries? If so, we want to hear from you.

Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and other objective job-related factors. The expected base salary range for this position is 184,000 USD – 287,500 USD.

You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.

Applications for this job will be accepted at least until November 3, 2026.

This posting is for an existing vacancy.

NVIDIA uses AI tools in its recruiting processes.

NVIDIA is committed to fostering an inclusive work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.

How we rate this

Senior System Software Engineer, Software Defined Networking at NVIDIA rates 22 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Little AI. AI is not part of the work.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Key facts

Senior System Software Engineer, Software Defined Networking is an open job at NVIDIA.
Level rates this role AI Level 1 of 4: Little AI.
The listed salary is $184k-$288k a year.
The role is based in US, CA, Santa Clara.
The job was posted on September 4, 2026.
Seniority: senior.
Applications are handled by NVIDIA. Apply on NVIDIA