Job
Description
The Role: We are seeking a Principal Cloud Networking Engineer to serve as the foundational technical anchor and architect for our flagship product. This is a rare greenfield opportunity to define the core architecture of a category-defining technology. As our most senior technical individual contributor, you will be a visionary who sets the standard for engineering excellence, making the critical, early decisions that will shape our product and organization for years to come. You will not be maintaining legacy systems or making incremental improvements you will be building the future of cloud networking from a clean slate. Responsibilities: Architectural Leadership: Architect and design the core multi-cloud networking data plane and control plane, ensuring scalability, resilience, and security from first principles. Author the definitive design documents, technical roadmaps, and standards for the entire engineering organization. Hands-On Prototyping & Implementation: Lead the hands-on implementation of foundational system components, particularly those involving complex protocol interactions (BGP, IPsec, MPLS) and advanced overlay technologies (VXLAN). Develop, own, and evangelize the Infrastructure as Code (IaC) strategy for our multi-cloud testbeds and production environments. Cross-Functional Guidance: Serve as the products's ultimate subject-matter expert on all facets of networking and distributed systems. Mentor engineers across all teams, elevating the technical bar of the entire group. Collaborate closely with product leadership to translate ambiguous customer requirements into a robust and elegant technical architecture. Required Qualifications : 10-15+ years of experience in network engineering, with a significant track record in software-defined networking, cloud networking, or building networking products at scale. Deep, expert-level, hands-on knowledge of BGP, IPsec, and MPLS, including their application in both carrier-grade and large-scale data center environments. Expert-level understanding of overlay technologies, particularly VXLAN, and their intricate interaction with physical and virtual underlay networks. Demonstrable experience architecting and implementing complex, high-performance networking solutions across at least two of the major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP). Deep familiarity with the native networking constructs of major clouds (e.g., AWS Transit Gateway, Azure vWAN, GCP Network Connectivity Center, VPCs, Subnets, Security Groups) and their limitations. A proven track record of designing, building, and operating scalable, resilient, and secure distributed systems. Preferred Qualifications: Prior experience in a startup environment, particularly in building a networking or infrastructure software product from an early stage. Significant contributions to open-source networking projects (e.g., FRR, GoBGP, Calico, Cilium, VPP). Deep expertise in network automation and observability stacks, including extensive, hands-on experience with Terraform/OpenTofu, Ansible, Python, Prometheus, and Grafana. Experience with high-performance computing (HPC), financial trading, or other environments where ultra-low latency and jitter are critical network design constraints. Advanced industry certifications such as CCIE, AWS Certified Advanced Networking, or equivalent
