Software Dev Principal Engineer — System Engineering (Network Security / Firewall OS)

Technical leader and hands-on architect responsible for the deepest layers of a next-generation firewall operating system from data-plane packet processing and kernel interfaces to secure platform boot chains, crash diagnostics, and performance optimization across physical appliance and virtual firewall product

• →System Architecture — Define and evolve the firewall OS architecture across multiple hardware generations and virtual platforms; OS interface design (A/B image lifecycle, secure boot, recovery mode)
• →Data Plane Performance — Architect high-performance packet pipelines using DPDK/ODP; optimize throughput, connection rates, and DPI-SSL concurrency across multi-core, multi-queue environments
• →Crash Analysis & Security Hardening — Serve as senior escalation point for production crashes; drive ASan/eBPF adoption; triage and fix memory corruption, deadlocks, and watchdog failures
• →Hotfix & Escalation Engineering — Build and deliver targeted firmware fixes; analyze diagnostic logs from field deployments to resolve critical customer issues
• →Technical Leadership — Set architectural standards and design review processes; mentor engineers on systems debugging and performance analysis; drive modern development workflows

• Education: B.Tech/B.E. or M.Tech/M.S. in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field
• Experience: 15+ years in systems/embedded software engineering, with 5+ years in a principal/staff-level technical leadership role. Proven track record shipping production firmware for network security appliances, routers, or embedded networking products.

• C Systems Programming — Expert-level C in large embedded codebases; POSIX threading, custom memory allocators, 32→64-bit migration, endianness handling
• Data Plane — DPDK or ODP: poll-mode drivers, hugepages, RSS, SR-IOV, lockless data structures, per-core caching
• Debugging — Coredump analysis (GDB on ARM64/x86), ASan/MSan, eBPF tracing, multi-threaded crash analysis, watchdog/D-state debugging
• Security — Secure boot chains, signed images, LUKS2 encryption, certificate management, vulnerability triage
• Networking — TCP/IP (IPv4/IPv6), IPSec (IKE/IKEv2), stateful firewall internals (connection cache, NAT, DPI), routing protocols

• Linux Kernel — Kernel internals (scheduler, memory manager, networking stack), kernel module development, namespaces/cgroups, dm-verity/dm-crypt
• Virtualization (VMware ESXi, KVM/QEMU, Hyper-V) and cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Federal certifications (Common Criteria, FIPS 140-3, USGv6, CSfC)
• CI/CD for multi-architecture firmware builds

• Systems thinker — reasons across hardware, kernel, data plane, and application layers simultaneously
• Hands-on leader — writes code, reviews designs, and debugs production crashes alongside the team
• Security-first mindset — treats every memory bug as a potential CVE
• Cross-functional communicator — translates deep technical issues into actionable guidance for PM, QA, and field teams.

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