DPU Networking Architect, Infrastructure Silicon

Meta's Infrastructure Silicon organization designs custom silicon that powers our data center infrastructure — SmartNICs/IPUs/DPUs, AI accelerators, and networking ASICs.

We are looking for a Data Processing Unit (DPU) Network Architect to own how our DPUs handle networking: packet processing and offloads, network virtualization and overlays, RDMA and storage transports, and inline security.

You'll decide how the networking datapath is built and where each function belongs - in hardware, in firmware, or in host software - define how software programs it, and carry those decisions from early path-finding through implementation and silicon bring-up. You'll work hand in hand with the firmware, driver, and RTL teams, backing your calls with performance and PPA analysis where deeper study is needed.

Responsibilities

• Architect the Networking datapath for our DPUs - packet processing and offloads, Network virtualization and overlays, RDMA and storage transports, and inline security - from early path-finding through silicon bring-up
• Decide what runs in the datapath engines, what runs in firmware, and what stays in host software, and design the interfaces between them
• Define how software programs and controls the datapath - match-action tables, rule and flow programming, register and descriptor interfaces, and the offload interfaces firmware and drivers build on
• Work closely with firmware, driver, and software teams so the datapath and its interfaces are clean, efficient, and genuinely usable, and evolve them as needs change
• Work closely with design, DV, and PD teams on feature definition and PPA tradeoff; refine architecture to meet the design and PD constraints. Define architecture to maximize DV complexity including defining specific features to help ease DV
• Weigh the performance, power, and area trade-offs behind your choices and back them with data, partnering with performance modeling where deeper analysis is needed
• Support Design, DV and PD to resolve interface and integration issues as they come up. Support post-silicon bring-up of the Networking functionality

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, relevant technical field, or equivalent practical experience
• 8+ years of relevant industry experience architecting Networking datapaths and packet-processing pipelines and their hardware/software interfaces for NIC/DPU or comparable ASICs
• Experience with SmartNIC/IPU/DPU architectures and their usages: Network virtualization, storage disaggregation, overlay networking, virtual switch, firewall/ACLs, and PSP gateways, including offload mechanisms
• Experience with datacenter Networking technologies and protocols such as Ethernet, IPv6, TCP/UDP, Geneve, PSP, and SRv6, including offload mechanisms for TCP segmentation, reassembly, checksum, and receive-side scaling
• Experience with RDMA and storage protocols and fabrics, including RoCEv2 and NVMe/NVMe-over-Fabric (TCP and RDMA)
• Experience with congestion control (e.g., DCQCN) and emerging transports such as UET and comparable next-generation RDMA transports
• Experience with on-chip scheduling and arbitration architectures and quality-of-service mechanisms -- transaction/packet schedulers, arbiters, traffic shapers, and rate limiters (meters/policers, token buckets) -- and their impact on latency, fairness, bandwidth partitioning, and throughput
• Experience with datacenter network topologies and fabric architectures (e.g., Clos/fat-tree, rail-optimized fabrics) and their performance implications, including oversubscription, ECMP/load balancing, and end-to-end latency and congestion behavior
• Experience with symmetric and asymmetric cryptography concepts and inline data encryption (e.g., IPSec, PSP)
• Experience with domain-specific dataplane languages such as P4
• Experience with data center workloads and their networking characteristics
• Experience with analytical performance-modeling methods (e.g., queueing theory, Little's Law, bandwidth-delay/outstanding-transaction sizing)
• Experience driving analysis independently and influencing architectural direction through data PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or Electrical Engineering
• 15+ years of relevant industry experience architecting networking datapaths and packet-processing pipelines and their hardware/software interfaces for NIC/DPU or comparable ASICs
• Experience designing high-performance offload architectures for NVMe-over-Fabric
• Experience designing data-plane offload/acceleration architectures using programmable processors/engines (programmable parsers, match-action, etc.)
• Experience designing high-performance inline data encryption engines, such as for IPSec and PSP
• Experience with hardware description languages (e.g., SystemVerilog, VHDL) and simulation environments used in ASIC development flows
• Experience with GPU, machine learning, multi-threaded programming paradigm
• Experience with emerging RDMA transports such as UET and comparable next-generation RDMA protocols
• Experience with post-silicon performance validation and model-to-hardware correlation methodologies
• Experience with performance modeling and workload characterization for networking architectures, including analytical methods (e.g., queueing theory, Little's Law) and frameworks such as SystemC
• Experience with high-level synthesis, power-performance-area trade-off analysis, or PPA-driven microarchitectural optimization
• Experience designing scheduling, arbitration, or rate-limiting/traffic-management hardware (e.g., hierarchical schedulers, WRR/DWRR/strict-priority arbiters, shapers/policers)
• Experience developing Python-based automation pipelines for simulation orchestration, regression testing, and performance data analysis