Systems Engineer II

Dive in and do the best work of your career at DigitalOcean. Journey alongside a strong community of top talent who are relentless in their drive to build the simplest scalable cloud. If you have a growth mindset, naturally like to think big and bold, and are energized by the fast-paced environment of a true industry disruptor, you’ll find your place here. We value winning together—while learning, having fun, and making a profound difference for the dreamers and builders in the world. We want people who are passionate about optimizing and troubleshooting data center hardware at mega-scale so our customers don’t have to worry! Reporting to the Manager of Infra Machines Design, you will act as the team lead for sustaining engineering efforts for the hardware infrastructure of the DigitalOcean server fleet. The ideal candidate will be eager to face new challenges as DigitalOcean continues to scale its data center footprint and infrastructure cloud capacity and explore new technologies and capabilities to bring to our customers, providing top-tier support for our hardware and firmware in the DO fleet. What You’ll Be Doing: Act as technical lead for the Sustaining Engineering team in the Infra::Machines::Design Organization Support server hardware, cabling, and networking hardware throughout its operational lifecycle Monitor the #machines channel and MACHINES JIRA project for issues and drive them to resolution Participate in 24/7 on-call rotation with other members of the team Act as Tier 2 escalation for Datacenter Operations (DCOPS) and Cloud Operations (CloudOps) regarding hardware and firmware components Develop and maintain standards and practices for DigitalOcean hardware operations Work closely with the Qualification team, Firmware team, Fleet Lifecycle Engineering team (FLE), Foresight team, and Infrastructure Services team to resolve issues in tooling, firmware packages, hardware components, and other operational concerns Liase with DCOPS teams to develop, deliver, and support hardware-related runbooks Liase with vendor support teams regarding hardware and firmware issues and drive issues to resolution Identify gaps in tooling and operational processes and engage appropriate peer teams to close gaps Help with development of tooling and associated runbooks to address gaps in operational capabilities around hardware and firmware operationsCoordinate with Ops teams on monitoring thresholds, failure modes and alerting Assist in troubleshooting cause of failures and work to prevent them in the future Raise the quality bar in the delivery of our cloud infrastructure by identifying industry best practices and working to adopt them What We’ll Expect From You: Technical Degree (BS Computer Science/Engineering) or equivalent practical experience Hands-on experience operating a cloud infrastructure at mid-tier scale or better An in-depth understanding of server hardware, firmware, and infrastructure Strong knowledge in troubleshooting techniques, Python and BASHExtra points for JTAG debugging / Firmware troubleshooting / Wire sniffing experience Clear communication and collaboration across key stakeholders An insatiable passion for constant improvement Compensation Range: $107,000 - $134,000 *This is a remote role JR: 2026-7601 #LI-Remote Why You’ll Like Working for DigitalOcean We innovate with purpose. You’ll be a part of a cutting-edge technology company with an upward trajectory, who are proud to simplify cloud and AI so builders can spend more time creating software that changes the world. As a member of the team, you will be a Shark who thinks big, bold, and scrappy, like an owner with a bias for action and a powerful sense of responsibility for customers, products, employees, and decisions. We prioritize career development. At DO, you’ll do the best work of your career. You will work with some of the smartest and most interesting people in the industry. We are a high-performance organization that ... (truncated, view full listing at source)