Senior Software Developer, Dataplane Adapters

About this role

Enterprise AI is moving from pilots to production, and the constraint is no longer the model — it's the data. Agents are only as good as what they can sense, trust, and act on in the moment, and real-time, event-driven data is becoming the foundation every serious AI system runs on.
Solace is the leading real-time data platform for the enterprise AI era. Established enterprises worldwide — including RBC Capital Markets, Bosch, Heineken, PSA Singapore, United Airlines, Schwarz Group, and hundreds more — have built their business around Solace to enable intelligent, real-time experiences, modernize their application and integration landscape, and create seamless digital journeys for their customers, partners, and employees.
So, the next time you drive a car, order furniture online, fly in a plane, check your bank balance on your phone, your positive experience could be a direct result of our technology—and your hard work!
About the Role
We at Solace believe we build the world's best event broker – the backbone of real-time business, trusted to move billions of messages a day across cloud, on-premises, and edge environments with unmatched reliability and performance.
At the heart of the Solace Event Broker lies the Datapath – the engine responsible for moving messages at high rate, with low latency and utmost reliability. The Dataplane Adapters team owns the protocol surface: the MQTT, AMQP, REST, RDP, and Kafka adapters that let clients and applications connect, publish, and consume messages. This work spans our custom hardware appliance – built around FPGAs and a Cavium network processor – and our software broker running on Intel server processors. The code is highly multi-threaded and performance-oriented, and our developers regularly go deep into TCP, hardware interfaces, and OS internals to deliver features that meet our strict performance and reliability bar.
This position is for a Senior Software Developer on the Dataplane Adapters team. In this role you will be a key technical leader who contributes to the architecture of our protocol adapters and leads the design and delivery of the most complex features for how clients connect to the broker. You will shape technical direction across the hardware and software platforms, mentor other developers, represent the team with customers and other R&D groups, and be a go-to person for the hardest performance and field problems. Your expertise will shape how the world's largest enterprises move their most critical data.
Are You Someone Who:

• Has a passion for high-performance systems with a deep understanding of multi-threaded C++, TCP/IP, and the Linux kernel?

• Thrives on solving complex protocol and performance challenges in distributed messaging systems?

• Has experience building high-throughput, low-latency systems?

• Enjoys mentoring and leading technical teams while contributing to architectural decisions?

• Values craftsmanship, collaboration, and delivering exceptional customer experiences?

• Is humble, honest and open?

What You'll Do:

• Lead Adapter Design: Contribute to the architecture of our protocol adapters, lead the design and technical delivery of the most complex features across the hardware appliance and software broker, and own the technical decisions within those features

• Drive Technical Innovation: Research and prototype new protocol features, networking techniques, and performance approaches to keep the Solace datapath ahead of the industry

• Develop Core Platform Features: Design and build the most complex, performance-critical adapter features in multi-threaded C++, going deep into TCP, hardware interfaces, and OS internals when needed

• Mentor and Lead: Provide technical leadership and mentorship to intermediate and junior developers, lead design and code reviews, and establish best practices for the team, including how we use AI-assisted development in performance-critical code

• Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Work with product management, other datapath teams, hardware engineering, support, and customers to translate requirements into designs and to influence the product roadmap

• Ensure Quality and Performance: Define the testing and performance strategy for the adapters and lead the resolution of the hardest customer-found defects and performance escalations

• Stay Current: Stay ahead of messaging protocol standards, networking, and hardware trends, and apply this knowledge to drive continuous improvement at Solace

What You Bring:

• Systems Expertise: 10+ years of software development experience with 5+ years writing multi-threaded, performance-oriented code in C++

• Programming Excellence: Expert-level proficiency in C++, concurrency, low-level memory management, and debugging complex applications with core files and code

• Systems Design: Experience designing and building high-throughput, low-latency systems (for example messaging systems, network stacks, storage engines, or trading platforms)

• Networking Depth: Solid understanding of TCP/IP, and a willingness to go deep into protocol specifications, Linux kernel behaviour, and hardware interfaces when a problem needs it

• AI-Assisted Development: Demonstrated proficiency with AI coding tools such as Claude Code, and good judgment about where they help and where they do not in performance-critical code

• Technical Leadership: Proven track record of leading technical teams, mentoring engineers, and driving complex technical projects to completion

• Communication Skills: Excellent written and verbal communication skills with ability to explain complex technical concepts to diverse audiences

• Field Experience: Track record of leading the resolution of the hardest customer-found defects and performance escalations

• A team player who enjoys collaborating with cross-functional teams

• Detail-oriented to ensure designs meet requirements and are built to high quality

Nice to Have:

• Experience in network programming (POSIX sockets)…