Alkira, a Lumen company, is a fast-growing cloud networking company that is transforming the way enterprise networks are deployed and managed.

The Role: Alkira’s Data Path team owns the lowest layer of the product: the code that forwards customer traffic at line rate, the

encryption that protects it, and the address translation and tunneling that connect customer networks across clouds. At its center is a stateful engine that tracks every connection and applies routing, translation, and policy as packets pass through.

This role begins on the layer that programs the fastpath: the Go agents, Python tooling, and Ansible automation that configure the datapath, push state onto it, and report what it is doing. It progresses into the C fastpath itself, and into ownership of datapath features.

Role Responsibilities

• Build and extend the Go agents that program the datapath, pushing configuration onto the fastpath and reconciling running state against intended state.

• Build the Python tooling and CLI used to drive, inspect, and debug the datapath.

• Write the Ansible automation that stands up and configures the networking stack on our nodes.

• Develop the exporters and observability that report fastpath behavior: counters, flow state, and packet-level signals.

• Write tests and reproduction cases for datapath behavior.

• Measure and tune datapath performance: packet rates, latency, and where cycles are spent.

• Debug production datapath issues with the team, and participate in the on-call rotation.

• Use AI tools such as Claude Code for tooling, test generation, and code navigation.

On-call is a required part of this role. Engineers join the datapath rotation once ramped, with coverage shared across the US and India.

Please Note: The interview process will include a coding challenge, screening with the hiring manager, and technical interviews

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, with 1-4 years of experience developing software for networking, distributed systems, operating systems, or cloud infrastructure; we weigh fundamentals more heavily than experience with any specific technology.

• Operating systems. Processes, threads, memory, scheduling, and system call behavior. The fastpath operates across the userspace/kernel boundary.

• Computer architecture. Caches, the memory hierarchy, and the cost of a cache miss. At line rate, the budget is cycles per packet, which makes memory layout a design decision.

• Computer networks. TCP/IP, packet header structure, and how packets are forwarded, routed, and translated between hosts.

• Algorithms and data structures. A flow table is a lookup problem at scale; hashing, tries, and reasoning about time and space costs apply directly.

• Debugging. Isolating faults in an unfamiliar system and driving them to root cause.

• Linux. The shell, processes, logs, and standard networking tools.

Plus, but not a must...

• C. The fastpath is written in C, and the role progresses into it. Coursework or substantial personal projects count; production experience is not required.

• Go and Python. Both are used throughout the layer that programs the fastpath.

• Ansible, or configuration automation generally. Experience writing automation that executes against live systems.

• Distributed systems. The datapath runs across a fleet, and the layer that programs it deals with distributed state, control, and observability.

Lumen is the trusted network for the AI-powered world, connecting people, data, and applications through one of the world’s most expansive fiber networks. We enable secure, high-performance connectivity across cloud, edge, and AI workloads for enterprises, governments, and communities.

Everything we do at Lumen takes advantage of our network strength. From metro connectivity to long-haul data transport to our edge cloud, security, and managed service capabilities, we meet our customers’ needs today and as they build the future.