Distributed Systems Engineer (L4) - Cloud Engineering

Netflix is one of the world's leading entertainment services, with over 300 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, films and games across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members can play, pause and resume watching as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, and can change their plans at any time.

The Cloud Engineering organization exists to manage that massive scale, constantly innovating to increase fleet-wide agility, efficiency, and reliability of the Netflix cloud infrastructure, while solving scale problems that we are the first to ever hit. We build, operate, and maintain Compute, Network, and Storage services so that developers at Netflix can rely on foundational building blocks when entertaining hundreds of millions of customers around the world. We run one of the largest cloud footprint. Join us as we push the boundaries of performance and resilience, empowering developers to create groundbreaking applications on a reliable platform.

We are looking to add a few new stunning colleagues to the teams outlined below.

Team Spotlights -

Service Networking

Join our team and help shape the future of service communication at Netflix! As part of our Service Networking team, you will play a pivotal role in building, and operating the core infrastructure that empowers seamless, resilient, and secure service-to-service communication across Netflix’s cloud ecosystem. Leveraging cutting-edge open-source technologies like Envoy, our team redefines the interprocess communication (IPC) paradigm at a scale few companies experience, supporting critical business areas including Streaming, Live Events, Ads, and Gaming. You’ll collaborate with a diverse group of talented engineers to drive innovation in resilience, observability, security, and Gen AI use cases, while continuously iterating to meet the evolving needs of our stakeholders. If you are eager to make a tangible impact on the backbone of Netflix’s cloud platform, we’d love to hear from you!

Compute Abstractions

Netflix’s Compute organization owns our internet-scale cloud footprint. We constantly innovate to increase fleet-wide agility, efficiency, and reliability of this infrastructure. In Compute Abstractions, we believe getting up and running in the cloud quickly should be the easiest step to build your service, and that you should be able to “set it and forget it”. To help our internal customers do this, we build, operate, and maintain APIs and managed configurations on our compute platform, Titus, that abstract away compute resource complexity and scaling responsiveness. We see the future as one where our customers can rely on industry-leading, scalable, right-sized, and optimized compute without the need to know anything about where or on what their workloads run.

Traffic Engineering

The Traffic Engineering team designs, builds, and operates the core infrastructure that manages how traffic flows across Netflix’s cloud and edge environments. As part of the Traffic team, you’ll be at the forefront of tackling complex, real-time challenges—optimizing for speed and scale as we seamlessly shift tens of millions of viewers across continents. Our systems ensure that every member receives a fast, reliable, and high-quality streaming experience, even during massive live events and unexpected spikes in demand. It’s a chance to help build the infra platform that powers some of the biggest live streaming moments ever, making sure the show always goes on. The Traffic team is instrumental in driving Netflix’s cloud scalability and resiliency by building robust capabilities for end-to-end traffic management, including region failover, traffic shaping, and predictive scaling. We work closely with Data Science to develop and operationalize predictive models, translating them into actionable strategies for scaling our infrastructure in real time. By automating and optimizing traffic management, we enable Netflix to deliver uninterrupted entertainment to hundreds of millions of members worldwide—making our work critical to Netflix’s reputation, member satisfaction, and continued growth.

Requirements:

Must-have skills:

• 3-6 years of professional Software Engineering experience.

• Recent and proficient experience with Java, C++, Go, Python, or similar.

• Experience building & operating highly reliable distributed systems in a cloud environment.

• Passion for technology, pragmatic thinking, ability to jump into an ambiguous area and break down complex problems.

What you'll be doing:

• Building and operating Services, APIs, and Tooling for a variety of use-cases.

• Balancing bias to action with the ability to make well-informed bets.

• Engaging directly with end engineering users to understand their needs and improve their experience.

• Understanding and solving business needs at scale with high-quality solutions.

• Leaning into proactiveness and effective communication in pursuit of cross-functional alignment.

Success criteria:

• You thrive in ambiguity; complex and fuzzy requirements are more common than clearly defined customer expectations.

• You take incremental steps toward solving big problems; test-and-learn approaches work better than heads-down development.

• You are independent and self-driven; progress is often self-directed by teams & individuals.

• You’ve read about Netflix’s culture and think you would thrive here.

Here are a few recent talks and posts from members of the team to highlight the work we do:

• Keeping Netflix Reliable Using Prioritized Load Shedding

• How Netflix uses eBPF Flow logs

• NATless IPv6/IPv4 Address Translation

• Consistent caching mechanisms in Titus Gateway

• Netflix Drive

• Zero Configuration Service Mesh with On-Demand Cluster Discovery

• Behind the Streams: Three Years Of Live at Netflix. Part 1

• Behind the Streams: Three Years Of Live at Netflix. Part 2

*********

Generally, our compensation structure consists solely of an annual salary; we do not have bonuses. You choose each year how much of your compensation you want in salary versus stock options. To determine your personal top of market compensation, we rely on market indicators and consider your specific job family, background, skills, and experience to determine your compensation in the market range. The range for this role is $170K - $720K.

Netflix provides comprehensive benefits including Health Plans, Mental Health support, a 401(k) Retirement Plan with employer match, Stock Option Program, Disability Programs, Health Savings and Flexible Spending Accounts, Family-forming benefits, and Life and Serious Injury Benefits. We also offer paid leave of absence programs. Full-time hourly employees accrue 35 days annually for paid time off to be used for vacation, holidays, and sick paid time off. Full-time salaried employees are immediately entitled to flexible time off. See more detail about our Benefitshere.

Inclusion is a Netflix value and we strive to host a meaningful interview experience for all candidates. If you want an accommodation/adjustment for a disability or any other reason during the hiring process, please send a request to your recruiting partner.

We are an equal-opportunity employer and celebrate diversity, recognizing that diversitybuilds stronger teams. We approach diversity and inclusion seriously and thoughtfully. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service.

Job is open for no less than 7 days and will be removed when the position is filled.