Principal Engineer – Network

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in California.

📋 Description

• Take ownership of the IP and optical architecture for CrowdStrike's global backbone, ensuring connectivity to both traditional and neocloud providers.

• Establish a multi-year roadmap to guide network evolution, incorporating traffic engineering strategies, capacity planning, and demand forecasting.

• Lead significant initiatives from the funding phase through to implementation and ongoing operational management.

• Serve as the primary escalation contact during the 24x7 on-call rotation for major incidents.

• Oversee the selection of platforms for routing and optical hardware.

• Collaborate directly with vendor engineering teams to shape their development roadmaps.

• Interact with stakeholders at the director and VP levels across data center, application, and business teams.

• Define the strategic direction for network automation, infrastructure-as-code, telemetry, and analytics.

• Utilize frontier and open-weight AI models for telemetry analysis and automated triage while ensuring sensitive backbone data remains in-house.

• Evaluate designs from senior engineers and establish technical standards.

• Provide mentorship to senior engineers as they progress toward principal-level positions.

⛳️ Requirements

• Must be a US Citizen or hold a Green Card.

• A minimum of 12 years of experience in designing, constructing, and managing large-scale backbone networks, with a focus on global architecture.

• Extensive expertise in IP/MPLS core technologies, including IS-IS, MP-BGP, segment routing (SR-MPLS/SRv6), PE/P architectures, MPLS-TE, VRFs, DDoS mitigation, and CDN.

• Profound knowledge in optical transport technologies such as DWDM, coherent optics (400G/800G), ROADM architectures, amplifier design (EDFA/Raman), dispersion management, and alien wavelengths.

• Strong foundation in cloud networking, including direct connectivity, multi-cloud routing, and hybrid cloud implementations at scale across AWS, GCP, OCI, Azure, and neoclouds.

• Practical experience in related infrastructure domains, such as virtualization, containers, databases, message queuing, and large-scale provisioning.

• Demonstrated ability to formulate network automation and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) strategies.

• Familiarity with employing frontier and open-weight AI models in network operations, including the self-hosting of open-weight models when data sensitivity necessitates it.

• Background in operating or designing networks within FedRAMP-authorized environments.

• Proven track record in selecting, testing, and deploying networking hardware and software across major vendors, including Juniper, Infinera, Nokia, Arista, and Cisco.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Management Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• Demonstrated experience using AI technologies to improve decision-making, streamline workflows and processes, enhance efficiency, and drive business results.

🏝️ Benefits

• Competitive compensation and equity awards, positioning us as a market leader.

• Comprehensive programs for physical and mental wellness.

• Generous vacation and holiday policies for well-deserved rest and recharge.

• Paid parental and adoption leave offerings.

• Opportunities for professional development available to all employees, regardless of level or role.

• Employee Networks, local neighborhood groups, and volunteer opportunities to foster connections.

• A vibrant office culture with world-class amenities.

• Health insurance coverage.

• 401k retirement savings plan.

• Paid time off.

• Eligibility for performance bonuses.

• Equity grants available.