4 Digitalocean Virtualization Engineer Jobs Hiring Near You

AI coding agents are changing how software gets written. The infrastructure to run them reliably in production - persistent memory, cost controls, isolated execution, full observability - is still being built. That's what this team is solving.

As Principal Engineer for Managed Agents, you'll own the technical architecture of DigitalOcean's agent runtime platform: session lifecycle, memory, execution isolation, and the developer experience that ties it together. This is a company-level IC role - you'll set direction for multiple teams, influence the product roadmap, and define what production-grade agent infrastructure looks like at a company with the infrastructure depth and developer trust to make it real.

• Own the long-term technical design of the agent runtime: session lifecycle, memory persistence across sessions, execution isolation, and agent-to-tool interaction.
• Drive the memory layer - short-term context, long-term structured memory, episodic recall - ensuring it's reliable and practical for real production workloads.
• Set the bar for how coding agents integrate with developer infrastructure: repositories, CI/CD, and existing developer workflows.

• Build alignment across engineering pillars on a shared technical direction - resolving conflicts and maintaining momentum on a platform that spans infrastructure, AI, and developer experience.
• Partner with product to shape the multi-year strategy, not just the current release.

• Represent DigitalOcean in the agent infrastructure space through conference talks, open-source engagement, and relationships with the framework teams whose work runs on this platform.
• Inform ecosystem partnerships and vendor decisions with technical depth and strategic judgment.

• Be the technical north star for Staff and Senior engineers across the Managed Agents org - coaching on architecture, tradeoffs, and what good looks like.
• Define engineering standards for how DigitalOcean builds, ships, and monitors production agent systems.

You've built production infrastructure developers trust at scale. You're technically exceptional and organizationally effective. You likely bring:

• 12+ years building production infrastructure, AI/ML systems, developer tools, or cloud platforms - shipping things developers depend on at scale.
• Deep expertise in agent memory systems (retrieval, long-term context, grounding) or AI coding assistance (code understanding, execution environments, developer workflow integration).
• Experience with distributed systems lifecycle management: session persistence, state snapshotting, execution isolation, or multi-tier storage.
• A track record of driving technical decisions across multiple teams - not just recommending, but executing across organizational boundaries.
• The ability to communicate a technical vision to engineers, executives, and industry audiences - and make each one trust it.
• Strong software engineering in Python and at least one production systems language. You still write code.

• Prior Principal Engineer, Distinguished Engineer, or equivalent IC - with company-level impact, not just team or pillar.
• Experience building developer infrastructure: cloud runtimes, execution sandboxes, CI/CD systems, or platforms other engineers build on top of.
• Hands-on experience with agent memory or retrieval in production: RAG, semantic search, knowledge graphs, or long-term session context.
• External technical leadership: conference talks, open-source ownership, publications, or standards work in AI infrastructure or developer tooling.

• Master's or PhD in CS, distributed systems, ML, AI, or equivalent depth through industry work and public contributions.
• Experience with virtualization primitives: microVMs, Firecracker, gVisor, or OCI runtimes.
• Familiarity with agent frameworks in production: LangGraph, CrewAI, Claude Agent SDK, OpenAI Agents SDK, or similar.
• Patents, publications, or significant open-source work in agent systems, cloud infrastructure, or applied ML.

• $227,040 - $283,800

*This is a hybrid role

JR: 2025-7060

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