Software Dev Principal Engineer — System Engineering (Network Security / Firewall OS)

SonicWall is a cybersecurity forerunner with more than 30 years of expertise and is recognized as a leading partner-first company, ensuring our partners and their customers are never alone in the fight against cybercrime. With the ability to build, scale and manage security across the cloud, hybrid and traditional environments in real-time, SonicWall provides relentless security against the most evasive cyberattacks across endless exposure points for increasingly remote, mobile and cloud-enabled users. With its own threat research center, SonicWall can quickly and economically provide purpose-built security solutions to enable any organization - enterprise, government agencies and SMBs - around the world. For more information, visit www.sonicwall.com or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

About the Role

Technical leader and hands-on architect responsible for the deepest layers of a next-generation firewall operating system from data-plane packet processing and kernel interfaces to secure platform boot chains, crash diagnostics, and performance optimization across physical appliance and virtual firewall product

Key Responsibilities:

System Architecture - Define and evolve the firewall OS architecture across multiple hardware generations and virtual platforms; OS interface design (A/B image lifecycle, secure boot, recovery mode)

Data Plane Performance - Architect high-performance packet pipelines using DPDK/ODP; optimize throughput, connection rates, and DPI-SSL concurrency across multi-core, multi-queue environments

Crash Analysis & Security Hardening - Serve as senior escalation point for production crashes; drive ASan/eBPF adoption; triage and fix memory corruption, deadlocks, and watchdog failures

Hotfix & Escalation Engineering - Build and deliver targeted firmware fixes; analyze diagnostic logs from field deployments to resolve critical customer issues

Technical Leadership - Set architectural standards and design review processes; mentor engineers on systems debugging and performance analysis; drive modern development workflows

Required Qualifications:

Education: B.Tech/B.E. or M.Tech/M.S. in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field

Experience: 15+ years in systems/embedded software engineering, with 5+ years in a principal/staff-level technical leadership role. Proven track record shipping production firmware for network security appliances, routers, or embedded networking products.

Must-Have Skills

C Systems Programming - Expert-level C in large embedded codebases; POSIX threading, custom memory allocators, 3264-bit migration, endianness handling

Data Plane - DPDK or ODP: poll-mode drivers, hugepages, RSS, SR-IOV, lockless data structures, per-core caching

Debugging - Coredump analysis (GDB on ARM64/x86), ASan/MSan, eBPF tracing, multi-threaded crash analysis, watchdog/D-state debugging

Security - Secure boot chains, signed images, LUKS2 encryption, certificate management, vulnerability triage

Networking - TCP/IP (IPv4/IPv6), IPSec (IKE/IKEv2), stateful firewall internals (connection cache, NAT, DPI), routing protocols

Preferred Skills

Linux Kernel - Kernel internals (scheduler, memory manager, networking stack), kernel module development, namespaces/cgroups, dm-verity/dm-crypt

Virtualization (VMware ESXi, KVM/QEMU, Hyper-V) and cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP)

Federal certifications (Common Criteria, FIPS 140-3, USGv6, CSfC)

CI/CD for multi-architecture firmware builds

Desired Attributes:

Systems thinker - reasons across hardware, kernel, data plane, and application layers simultaneously

Hands-on leader - writes code, reviews designs, and debugs production crashes alongside the team

Security-first mindset - treats every memory bug as a potential CVE

Cross-functional communicator - translates deep technical issues into actionable guidance for PM, QA, and field teams.

#LI-DS9

#LI-Pune

#LI-Hybrid

#LI-LinuxKernal

#L-POSIX

#LI-DPDK

#LI-Dataplane

At SonicWall, we pride ourselves on recruiting a diverse mix of talented people and providing active security solutions in 100+ countries.

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