Principal Software Engineer, Load Balancer

About the role

Cisco Isovalent is looking for a Principal Software Engineer to lead the development of a next‑generation, eBPF‑based load balancer. The role focuses on building a standalone, enterprise‑grade solution that provides scalable, secure, and resilient traffic management for cloud‑native and hybrid environments.

Key responsibilities

• Define and evolve the architecture of an enterprise‑grade load balancer.
• Lead design and development of the data plane, control plane, and orchestration tools for high‑availability traffic management within Kubernetes.
• Guide the team through technical decisions, design reviews, and performance/security optimisations.
• Collaborate with engineering, product, and customer teams to align technical direction with business needs.
• Uphold engineering best practices, code quality, and operational excellence.

Required profile

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field.
• 5+ years of experience developing load‑balancing software, preferably using Go.
• Strong experience with Kubernetes, cloud‑native workloads, and distributed systems.

Required skills

• Go programming language.
• Kubernetes and cloud‑native ecosystem.
• eBPF and Linux kernel networking concepts.
• Design and implementation of APIs.
• Linux systems design, security, and networking.