Staff Highlight: Darren M. Kara

At Quad9, we aim to recognize the people behind the infrastructure that keeps the internet secure and reliable for millions of users worldwide. This staff highlight features Principal Engineer, Darren Kara, whose work focuses on the operational and infrastructure side of Quad9’s global resolver platform.

As a Principal Engineer, Darren’s day-to-day work sits squarely in the SRE and internet infrastructure space. He is responsible for maintaining and expanding Quad9’s global network, deploying new points of presence, improving automation, and troubleshooting issues across a distributed system. “A lot of the job is firefighting,” he explains, “but that’s also how you really get to know a system.” Having joined Quad9 a little over a year ago, Darren has taken a hands-on approach to learning the environment, contributing directly to the stability and performance of a platform that operates at global scale.

Since joining, Darren has focused heavily on expanding Quad9’s infrastructure footprint to meet growing demand. He helped address a backlog of deployments by accelerating the rollout of new points of presence, improving both performance and resilience for users worldwide. For Darren, working on DNS at this level carries a unique sense of purpose. He notes, “Working on a global resolver feels like working right at the place where the internet’s magic happens.” Quad9’s distributed anycast network, spanning hundreds of locations globally, is designed to deliver both speed and security to users everywhere.

Before joining Quad9, Darren built his career at organizations central to the internet’s core infrastructure. He joined ARIN in 2000 during a period of rapid growth, contributing to systems and networking that supported the registry platform and helping stand up LACNIC and AFRINIC. Later, at ICANN, he served as a Root Server Operator responsible for L-Root, part of the DNS root server system. Reflecting on these experiences, he says, “Those experiences really shaped how I think about reliability, scale, and responsibility when you are running critical internet services.” That mindset carries directly into his work at Quad9, where the stakes remain just as high. “Knowing that the work we do every day helps people all over the world reach the internet safely and reliably is what makes the job satisfying.”

What makes Quad9 stand out to Darren is its mission-driven approach. “At Quad9, the people of the world are the customers — not corporations, not governments, and not shareholders,” he says. This ethos shapes how the organization prioritizes privacy, security, and reliability in every decision. As a nonprofit operating a critical piece of internet infrastructure, Quad9 maintains a strong focus on protecting users from threats like malware and phishing while preserving their privacy. Darren also emphasizes the impact of the team itself: “It’s a very small team running a very large global service,” creating an environment where every contribution has meaningful, immediate impact.