Location: Hyderabad; DigitalOcean Hyderabad Office
Department: Agentic AI
Dive in and do the best work of your career at DigitalOcean. Journey alongside a strong community of top talent who are relentless in their drive to build the simplest scalable cloud. If you have a growth mindset, naturally like to think big and bold, and are energized by the fast-paced environment of a true industry disruptor, you’ll find your place here. We value winning together—while learning, having fun, and making a profound difference for the dreamers and builders in the world.
About the Role
DigitalOcean's Agentic AI organization provides a powerful inference cloud, Managed Agents, and robust Agent Learning Services that enable customers to run AI inference confidently at scale. We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to serve as a technical leader within our Agent Learning Services team, driving the Applied ML strategy to build a robust Continuous Learning Loop for our customers.
This is a high-impact leadership role where you will define the machine learning architectures that allow AI agents to learn from historical data, simulate synthetic data, and continuously self-improve. You will partner closely with our Infrastructure and product teams to translate complex ML concepts into scalable, production-ready continuous learning platforms.
What You’ll Be Doing
- Continuous Learning Architecture: Designing and implementing the core Applied ML pipelines for a Continuous Learning Loop, enabling AI agents to autonomously evaluate, learn, and adapt based on user interactions and synthetic data.
- Agent Optimization & Fine-Tuning: Developing the machine learning models and methodologies behind the Agent Optimizer, leveraging techniques like Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT), Reinforcement Learning from Human/AI Feedback (RLHF/RLAIF), and targeted optimization strategies to improve agent performance.
- Evaluations & Simulations: Building robust ML frameworks for Simulations and Evaluations, creating deterministic and non-deterministic scoring mechanisms, reward models, and objective metrics to benchmark agent behavior in complex multi-turn scenarios.
- Signals Processing: Architecting ML systems to extract high-quality, actionable "Signals" from noisy data, user feedback, and chat logs to feed back into the training and optimization loops.
- Model Application & Deployment: Bridging the gap between ML research and production by ensuring models are designed for efficient inference, working closely with RL Infrastructure engineers to deploy optimization algorithms at scale.
- Technical Strategy: Driving the long-term Applied ML roadmap for the Agentic AI organization, evaluating emerging research in continuous learning and agentic frameworks to keep DigitalOcean at the cutting edge.
- Cross-Functional Influence: Partnering closely with Product Managers, Data Scientists, and Infrastructure engineers to define product capabilities, experimental setups, and performance benchmarks for our agent learning services.
- Mentorship & Elevation: Mentoring senior engineers and ML practitioners, leading architectural reviews, and establishing best practices for model evaluation, ML pipeline observability, and reproducible experimentation.
What We Expect From You
- Extensive Experience: 10+ years of software engineering and machine learning experience, with a proven track record operating at a Staff, Principal, or Architect level designing, building, and scaling production-grade ML systems.
- Applied ML & Domain Mastery: Proven ability to decompose complex, ambiguous business goals into manageable machine learning problems that deliver strong & measurable impact. Deep expertise in Reinforcement Learning (RL), LLM fine-tuning methodologies (e.g., SFT, DPO, PPO), and continuous learning loops.
- Evaluation Frameworks & Guardrails: Deep experience building evaluation frameworks for non-deterministic AI systems, including establishing robust reward models, automated red-teaming, safety guardrails, scoring rubrics, and continuous benchmarking platforms.
- Research Contributions & Thought Leadership: Demonstrated leadership in the broader AI community through a track record of top-tier academic publications, high-impact open-source contributions, or technical patents in Applied ML and AI agent architectures.
- Cross-Functional AI Leadership: Proven expertise driving technical vision and execution across engineering, product, and infrastructure teams to build scalable, production-ready AI solutions from concept to deployment.
*This job is located in Hyderabad, India
JR: 2026-7876
#LI-Hybrid
Why You’ll Like Working for DigitalOcean
- We innovate with purpose. You’ll be a part of a cutting-edge technology company with a high-growth trajectory, who are proud to simplify cloud and AI so builders can spend more time creating software that changes the world. As part of our team, you’ll embody our "Shark" mindset: bold, ambitious, and scrappy. You'll lead with a bias for action and take true ownership of our products, customer success, and team culture.
- We prioritize career development. At DigitalOcean, you’ll do the best work of your career. You will join a community of exceptional talent, collaborating closely with some of the brightest and most interesting people in the industry. We are a high-performance and fast-paced organization that will always challenge you to think big. Our talent development team prioritizes your professional development and provides resources to support your growth. We provide employees with reimbursement for relevant conferences, training, and education, subject to company policy.
- We care about your well-being. We take a comprehensive approach to our total rewards packages because we know different things drive different people. Our benefits are designed to support you and may include flexible time off, local team meetups, and mental health and well being support. Our benefits philosophy is consistent globally, but specific benefits and eligibility vary by location to reflect local needs and regulations.
- We reward our employees. The salary range for this position is based on market data, relevant years of experience, and skills. Eligible employees may also receive equity compensation, which may include a new hire equity grant and, in participating countries, the opportunity to participate in our Employee Stock Purchase Program. Equity awards are subject to approval and the terms of the applicable plan.
- Non-sales roles: In addition to base salary, this role is eligible to participate in DigitalOcean’s annual bonus plan and may be eligible for a new hire equity grant, subject to plan terms and local eligibility. Bonus amounts depend on company and individual performance.
- Sales roles (sales compensation eligible): In addition to base salary, this role may be eligible to earn incentive compensation under the applicable sales compensation plan and may be eligible for a new hire equity grant, subject to plan terms and local eligibility.
- DigitalOcean is an equal-opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.
Application Limit: You may apply to a maximum of 3 positions within any 180-day period. This policy promotes better role-candidate matching and encourages thoughtful applications where your qualifications align most strongly.
