Staff Software Engineer - Network Protocols & Data Plane

Vectra® is the leader in AI-driven threat detection and response for hybrid and multi-cloud enterprises. The Vectra AI Platform delivers integrated signal across public cloud, SaaS, identity, and data center networks in a single platform. Powered by patented Attack Signal Intelligence, it empowers security teams to rapidly prioritize, investigate and respond to the most advanced cyber-attacks. With 35 patents in AI-driven threat detection and the most vendor references in MITRE D3FEND, organizations worldwide rely on the Vectra AI to move at the speed and scale of hybrid attackers. For more information, visit www.vectra.ai. Position Overview Vectra is looking for senior, AI-forward engineers to help expand and modernize our network data plane. This team builds the high-performance systems that ingest, process, parse, enrich, and deliver network metadata used by our detection, investigation, and response platform. This role sits at the center of Vectra's packet-processing architecture. You will work on the systems that receive network traffic, steer it through the right processing paths, extract meaningful protocol metadata, and deliver that data reliably through the platform at production scale. Protocol parsing is a major part of the mission, but the broader opportunity is to help shape a scalable data plane that can support more protocols, higher throughput, better validation, and faster delivery over time. The work requires systems engineering depth, hands-on networking experience, and comfort operating close to Linux, packet capture, hardware constraints, and performance limits. We are looking for engineers who can operate independently, use modern AI-assisted development tools effectively, and help build a repeatable engine for delivering data-plane capabilities with strong validation, test coverage, performance discipline, and operational reliability. Responsibilities - Design, implement, test, and maintain core network data-plane capabilities, including packet processing, protocol parsing, metadata extraction, and downstream delivery. - Improve scalable network data-path architecture on Linux, including packet ingestion, traffic steering, parser execution, metadata modeling, and downstream delivery. - Use AI-assisted development tools thoughtfully to accelerate investigation, implementation, test generation, and code review while maintaining engineering rigor. - Work across parsing, serialization, metadata modeling, validation, performance, and downstream platform integration. - Build feedback loops and test harnesses that validate data-plane behavior end-to-end, not just in isolated parser tests. - Diagnose correctness, performance, memory, concurrency, and reliability issues in complex packet-processing systems. - Collaborate with Product, Security Research, Data Science, and engineering teams to turn customer and platform needs into concrete technical outcomes. - Contribute to technical direction, design reviews, and engineering standards for network data-plane development. - For Staff-level candidates: lead data-plane designs, make major architectural tradeoffs clear, mentor engineers, establish repeatable engineering practices, and help grow durable technical ownership within the India team. Requirements - 10+ years or equivalent technical leadership. - 5+ years of production C++ experience in systems, infrastructure, networking, or similarly performance-sensitive environments. - Meaningful Rust experience or demonstrated ability to build production-quality systems in Rust or another memory-safe systems language. - 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, using Wireshark or equivalent tools, and implementing or debugging parsing and serialization logic. - Experience with substantial data-path technologies such as DPDK, XDP/AF_XDP, kernel-bypass networking, high-performance packet capture, or equivalent systems. - Understanding of NIC queues, RSS, tunneling, offloads, routing, traffic steering, and the practical constraints of packet-processing hardware. - Systems programming depth across Linux networking internals, allocators and memory ownership, data structures, concurrency, CPU/cache behavior, and performance diagnosis. - Experience building reliable, maintainable systems where correctness, throughput, latency, and operational reliability all matter. - Ability to troubleshoot complex systems using measurement, logs, traces, packet captures, profiling, and careful reasoning. - Ownership mindset: able to take a problem, clarify ambiguity, make tradeoffs visible, and drive it to completion. - Strong communication and collaboration skills across distributed teams. Preferred - Experience building protocol parsers, packet-processing systems, network telemetry systems, or high-throughput data pipelines. - Experience with parser validation, fuzzing, golden datasets, packet replay frameworks, or property-based testing. - Familiarity with DPDK, Linux networking internals, eBPF, XDP/AF_XDP, Suricata, Zeek, or similar systems. - Experience tuning systems across CPU, memory, NUMA, storage, and network boundaries. - Experience designing schemas or metadata models consumed by downstream analytics, search, detection, or investigation workflows. - Experience with CI/CD, Jenkins or similar systems, and Git-based development workflows. - Prior Staff+ ownership of a critical production data path or distributed systems component. What We’re Looking For The strongest candidates will be hands-on builders who are energized by hard systems problems. They should be comfortable moving fast, but not casually; quality, testability, maintainability, and performance all matter. We are especially interested in engineers who already use AI tools as part of their development workflow and can explain how they use them responsibly to improve speed, coverage, and understanding. For Staff-level candidates, we are looking for engineers who can shape technical direction and raise the execution level of the team around them. Staff engineers should be able to lead domain designs, write clear architectural proposals, guide major technical tradeoffs through Vectra's architecture process, raise engineering standards, mentor others, and help establish durable data-plane ownership in India. Education B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience. Vectra provides a comprehensive total rewards package that supports the financial, physical, mental and overall health of our employees and their families. Compensation includes competitive base pay, incentive plan eligibility, and participation in the employee equity plan (stock options). Specific benefits offered varies by location, but commonly include health care insurance, income protection / life insurance, access to retirement savings plans, behavioral & emotional wellness services, generous time away from work, and a comprehensive employee recognition program. Vectra is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status.