Job Description
At Gigamon, our purpose is to protect the hybrid networks and data of the largest, most complex organizations on the planet. Certified as a Great Place to Work, we offer a deep observability pipeline that efficiently delivers network-derived intelligence to cloud, security, and observability tools. This helps our customers to eliminate security blind spots, optimize network traffic, and dramatically reduce tool cost and complexity, enabling them to better secure and manage their hybrid cloud infrastructure. Gigamon has served more than 4,000 customers worldwide, including over 80 percent of Fortune 100 enterprises, 9 of the 10 largest mobile network providers, and hundreds of governments and educational organizations.
The Senior Principal Engineer – Platform Software will provide technical leadership for Gigamon’s core platform software that powers our products. This role defines and drives platform architecture, design, and evolution to deliver scalable, reliable, secure, and high‑performance capabilities. You will partner closely with hardware, firmware, systems, and application teams, as well as product and engineering leadership, to ensure cohesive end‑to‑end solutions. As a senior technical authority, you will influence platform roadmap decisions, guide critical implementations, and elevate engineering excellence across multiple teams.
What you’ll do:
- Define and drive the technical architecture for platform software in alignment with product strategy, scalability goals, and long-term maintainability.
- Lead the design and development of core platform components, system services, infrastructure layers, reusable frameworks, and common software building blocks.
- Provide technical leadership across teams for performance, reliability, security, diagnosability, and operability of platform software.
- Collaborate closely with hardware, firmware, systems, and application teams to ensure cohesive, end-to-end platform design and execution.
- Review and guide critical design decisions, implementation approaches, and code quality for major platform initiatives.
- Drive resolution of complex system-level and field issues through deep debugging, root cause analysis, and corrective architectural improvements.
- Influence the platform roadmap by identifying technology gaps, technical debt, and strategic investment opportunities.
- Champion engineering excellence through strong development practices, test and automation strategies, and robust release readiness.
- Mentor senior engineers and technical leads, raising the overall technical bar and shaping best practices across the organization.
- Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend pragmatic adoption where they provide clear business and engineering value.
What you’ve done:
- Built and delivered large-scale platform or systems software for 15+ years in a product engineering environment.
- Demonstrated strong expertise in C and C++, with solid fundamentals in data structures, algorithms, and operating systems.
- Architected and developed Linux-based platform software, embedded systems, network appliances, or other infrastructure-grade software products.
- Worked deeply with multithreading, memory management, inter-process communication, performance optimization, and low-level debugging.
- Designed reusable software frameworks and common services that improved scalability, modularity, and development velocity across teams.
- Led complex cross-functional technical initiatives and influenced outcomes beyond direct reporting lines.
- Solved difficult production and customer-facing issues in high-availability or performance-sensitive environments.
- Established credibility as a technical authority through strong execution, sound judgment, and the ability to clarify and simplify ambiguous technical problems.
- Mentored experienced engineers and helped shape architecture, standards, and engineering culture within a growing organization.
- Earned a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics, or a related technical field.
- Gained deep knowledge of Linux internals, system software concepts, and software architecture principles.
- Built reliable, scalable, and maintainable software for complex products, demonstrating excellent debugging, analytical, and problem-solving skills.
- Developed strong communication and collaboration skills, enabling effective work across engineering and leadership teams.
- (Preferred) Worked with networking, packet processing, observability, security, or visibility products.
- (Preferred) Gained familiarity with distributed systems, virtualization, containers, or cloud-integrated platforms.
- (Preferred) Driven platform modernization, common infrastructure initiatives, or next-generation architectural transitions.
- (Preferred) Gained exposure to CI/CD, automation frameworks, telemetry, and serviceability improvements in product engineering environments.
Who you are:
- A strategic technical leader who can set and communicate a clear architectural vision for platform software.
- A hands-on systems thinker who is comfortable diving into low-level details while keeping sight of broader product and platform goals.
- A collaborative partner who works effectively across hardware, firmware, systems, applications, and product teams.
- A decisive problem solver who brings rigor to debugging, root cause analysis, and architectural remediation.
- A mentor and role model who elevates others, shares knowledge openly, and helps build a culture of engineering excellence.
