Hoplynk · 1 month ago
Senior Software Engineer, Network & Protocol Team (San Francisco, C.A)
San Francisco, CA
Full-time
Onsite
Senior LevelHoplynk is a pre-seed startup spun out of Stanford University, focused on building the communications and networking layer for the intelligent edge. The Senior Software Engineer will lead the networking team, set the architecture, and deliver a production-grade multipath networking stack on Linux, while also mentoring team members and driving technical roadmaps.
Computer Software
Responsibilities
Define the end to end system architecture, including routing/transport policies, subflow management, and failover
Establish SLOs (latency, loss, failover time, goodput) and build comprehensive monitoring systems
Lead design reviews, RFCs, and implementation plans across kernel/user space (iproute2, netlink, tc, eBPF/XDP, mptcpd)
Design and run experiments with QEMU and other network simulation services
Partner with our embedded systems team on BSP, drivers, OTA/rollback, and device observability
Support deployments: capture traces, triage issues across layers, tune policies, and manage the release process as we scale customers
Mentor engineers, raise standards for documentation and reliability, and help hire the early networking team
Qualification
Required
Strong familiarity with writing low level code in Rust
Familiarity with queue management and load balancing optimization algorithms
Deep knowledge of Linux routing stacks — Babel, OLSR, batman-adv — and familiarity with DPDK, eBPF, or custom datapath acceleration
Strong understanding of TCP, QUIC/MP-QUIC, and MPTCP protocols: congestion control, subflow orchestration, and dynamic failover logic
Ability to prototype, simulate (e.g. QEMU, Mininet), and validate transport behavior under real-world conditions
Hands-on experience with network instrumentation and metrics: RTT, packet loss, throughput, jitter
Experience with perf, ftrace, mptcpd, and streaming telemetry pipelines
Mentorship, clear documentation, and ability to bridge firmware, kernel, and cloud domains
Experience with OpenWrt, Yocto, or Buildroot environments
Familiarity with OTA frameworks (RAUC, Mender), A/B partitioning, secure boot
Comfortable working close to the metal while integrating with higher-level telemetry or cloud APIs
Preferred
Familiarity with cellular modems, multi-SIM bonding, and adaptive path selection across ISPs for latency and privacy
Awareness of traffic fingerprinting and obfuscation techniques
Experience designing overlay networks or tunnel obfuscation layers (e.g., obfs4, Shadowsocks, uTLS)
Strong understanding of network encryption, key management, and secure channel establishment (TLS 1.3, WireGuard, IPsec)
Ability to interpret hardware schematics, understand PHY bring-up, or debug low-level Ethernet/Wi-Fi/5G link issues
Experience deploying communications or networking systems in robotics, autonomy, or rugged edge environments where RF and multipath conditions vary drastically
Company
Hoplynk
2-10 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Early StageCompany data provided by crunchbase