Senior Software Engineer, Foundational Infrastructure & Networking

Lyft
Toronto, Canada
On-site

Who this role is best for

Strong fit for candidates with deep cloud networking expertise who lead technical investigations and design scalable infrastructure.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with 6+ years in cloud networking and production systems who can design scalable infrastructure
    — “6+ Years of Production Systems Experience: Proven track record building and operating massive-scale cloud infrastructure and networking platforms.”
  • Individuals with hands-on experience in service mesh technologies like Envoy and Istio
    — “Hands-on experience building or operating large-scale proxy and mesh technologies (e.g., Envoy, Istio, Cilium, Nginx).”
  • Candidates who excel in troubleshooting distributed systems and optimizing control planes
    — “Optimize High-Throughput Control Planes: Enhance load-balancing algorithms, service discovery, and dynamic scaling mechanisms across high-concurrency data and control planes running on Kubernetes.”

Things to consider

  • Requires in-office presence at least 3 days per week, including Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays
    — “work in the office at least 3 days per week, including on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.”
  • Hybrid roles allow up to 4 weeks of remote work annually, but not fully remote
    — “hybrid roles have the flexibility to work from anywhere for up to 4 weeks per year.”

How to stand out

  • Highlight experience with Envoy Proxy and custom control planes in your resume and interviews
    — “Design, build, and optimize our service mesh, ingress/egress infrastructure, and edge routing capabilities using Envoy Proxy and custom control planes on AWS.”
  • Emphasize your ability to reduce MTTD and MTTR through observability and telemetry
    — “Drive Systems Reliability & Observability: Operationalize deep telemetry, metrics, and distributed tracing across our networking stack to drastically reduce mean-time-to-detect (MTTD) and resolution (MTTR).”
  • Showcase leadership in technical reviews and post-mortems, especially in high-concurrency environments
    — “Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Elevate engineering rigor through RFC reviews, technical vision, incident response post-mortems, and mentoring engineers across the broader Infrastructure org.”
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · HighDecision Impact · Team

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • Architect & scale core networking
  • Optimize high-throughput control planes
  • Drive systems reliability & observability
  • Hands-on production debugging
  • Technical leadership & mentorship
Typical background
6+ years of production systems experienceExpertise in cloud networking & protocolsService mesh & proxy expertise

Skills & requirements

Required

Linux NetworkingTcp/ipDNSGrpcHttp/2AWS Networking ArchitectureKubernetesTerraformDistributed Systems TroubleshootingEnvoy ProxyIstioCiliumNginx

Preferred

Service MeshIngress/egress InfrastructureEdge RoutingLoad BalancingService DiscoveryDynamic ScalingDeep TelemetryMetricsDistributed Tracing

Stack & domain

Linux NetworkingTcp/ipDNSGrpcHttp/2Load BalancingAWS Networking ArchitectureKubernetesTerraformDistributed Systems TroubleshootingEnvoy ProxyIstioCiliumNginxLeadershipTechnical VisionIncident ResponseMentoringCloud InfrastructureNetworkingMicroservicesPerformance Optimizations

About the role

Original posting from Lyft

At Lyft, our purpose is to serve and connect. Lyft’s Infrastructure organization builds the high-scale foundation that every engineer at Lyft relies on to ship safe, performant, and reliable services.

As a Senior Software Engineer on the Foundational Infrastructure & Networking team, you will own the core routing, service mesh, and control planes that power hundreds of microservices processing millions of rides daily. This is an IC role with massive engineering leverage: your technical architecture, systems design, and performance optimizations will directly amplify the velocity of every software engineer across Lyft while ensuring platform resiliency at scale.

Responsibilities

Architect & Scale Core Networking: Design, build, and optimize our service mesh, ingress/egress infrastructure, and edge routing capabilities using Envoy Proxy and custom control planes on AWS.

Optimize High-Throughput Control Planes: Enhance load-balancing algorithms, service discovery, and dynamic scaling mechanisms across high-concurrency data and control planes running on Kubernetes.

Drive Systems Reliability & Observability: Operationalize deep telemetry, metrics, and distributed tracing across our networking stack to drastically reduce mean-time-to-detect (MTTD) and resolution (MTTR).

Hands-on Production Debugging: Lead complex technical investigations into cross-stack incidents spanning kernel parameters, cloud VPC network layers, DNS, and distributed microservice protocols.

Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Elevate engineering rigor through RFC reviews, technical vision, incident response post-mortems, and mentoring engineers across the broader Infrastructure org.

Experience

6+ Years of Production Systems Experience: Proven track record building and operating massive-scale cloud infrastructure and networking platforms.

Expertise in Cloud Networking & Protocols: Deep understanding of Linux networking, TCP/IP, DNS, gRPC, HTTP/2, load balancing, and AWS networking architecture (VPCs, NLBs, subnets, transit gateways).

Service Mesh & Proxy Expertise: Hands-on experience building or operating large-scale proxy and mesh technologies (e.g., Envoy, Istio, Cilium, Nginx).

Cloud & Container Infrastructure: Strong experience managing production Kubernetes clusters running on public cloud providers (AWS/GCP) using Infrastructure-as-Code tools (Terraform).

Distributed Systems Troubleshooting: Demonstrated skill in isolating and debugging complex, multi-layered system failures under high throughput conditions.

Benefits:

Extended health and dental coverage options, along with life insurance and disability benefits

Mental health benefits

Family building benefits

Child care and pet benefits

Access to a Lyft funded Health Care Savings Account

RRSP plan with company match to help save for your future

In addition to provincial observed holidays, salaried team members are covered under Lyft's flexible paid time off policy. The policy allows team members to take off as much time as they need (with manager approval). Hourly team members get 15 days paid time off, with an additional day for each year of service 

Lyft is proud to support new parents with 18 weeks of paid time off, designed as a top-up plan to complement provincial programs. Biological, adoptive, and foster parents are all eligible.

Subsidized commuter benefits and Lyft ride credits

Lyft is committed to creating an inclusive workforce that fosters belonging. Lyft believes that every person has a right to equal employment opportunities without discrimination because of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, pardoned record of offences, or any other basis protected by applicable law or by Company policy. Lyft also strives for a healthy and safe workplace and strictly prohibits harassment of any kind.  Accommodation for persons with disabilities will be provided upon request in accordance with applicable law during the application and hiring process. Please contact your recruiter if you wish to make such a request.

Lyft highly values having employees working in-office to foster a collaborative work environment and company culture. This role will be in-office on a hybrid schedule — Team Members will be expected to work in the office at least 3 days per week, including on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Lyft considers working in the office at least 3 days per week to be an essential function of this hybrid role. Your recruiter can share more information about the various in-office perks Lyft offers. Additionally, hybrid roles have the flexibility to work from anywhere for up to 4 weeks per year. #Hybrid

The expected base pay range for this position in the Toronto area is CAD $136,000 - CAD $170,000, not inclusive of potential equity offering, bonus or benefits. Salary ranges are dependent on a variety of factors, including qualifications, experience and geographic location. Your recruiter can share more information about the salary range specific to your working location and other factors during the hiring process.

Lyft may use artificial intelligence to screen applicants, however, Lyft employees make the ultimate selection and hiring decisions.

This job fills an existing vacancy.

Source: Lyft careers

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