Principal Network Developer

hackajob is collaborating with Oracle to connect them with exceptional professionals for this role.

Description

Principal Network Developer
Location: Nashville or near one of our data center build locations
As an NRB engineer, you'll lead network expansion, automation, and deployment initiatives while working alongside engineering, automation, hardware, and operations teams to deliver highly reliable cloud infrastructure at hyperscale. This role requires approximately 25% travel, which typically means traveling at least once per month to OCI data centers-including Abilene, Texas, and other major AI deployment locations-to support network builds, commissioning, troubleshooting, and critical infrastructure milestones.
Lead network lifecycle management programs by defining high-level objectives and delivery procedures. Organizes project technical milestones & supporting tasks. May work as project technical lead, coordinating effort of two or three engineers. Advises project/program manager and coordinates with immediate and skip-level leadership. Collaborates across teams within same org (same VP). May serve as technical SME in cross-functional activities. Has technical responsibility for moderately complex project(s), including project requirements, specifications (where applicable), and documentation.

Responsible for decomposing high-level architectures into detailed designs. May lead multiple engineers in developing network solutions consisting of multiple modules with complex interactions; Work with supporting service teams to ensure solutions are properly supported by monitoring and automation systems. Serves at Tier2 or specialized escalation point for network events and provides break-fix support for large-scale events. Serves as principal point of contact for driving systematic resolution of complex network issues. Act as SME for root cause analysis efforts.

Frequently develops scripts to automate non-traditional, complex tasks for business unit. May serve as a technical lead on network automation design and delivery projects. Comprehensive understanding of the software development lifecycle.

Provides a broad set of guidance to technical and senior technical members of staff. Interprets input from leaders (technical and managers) and provides focused development to junior member. Able to carry out technical coaching sessions and helps junior members develop skills.

Collaborates with vendor engineering and account manager to address current business or operational issues. Participates in the development of RFQ/RFPs. May lead the adoption of new vendor hardware.

Active communication with product teams. Responsible to drive technology to meet product and service requirements. Participate in coordinated communication with product teams, networking leadership, and PMO to help assess gaps, solutions and needs.

Qualifications

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science preferred and at least 8 years of related experience.
• Experience working in a large ISP or cloud provider environment.
• Demonstrated knowledge of Python for automation and datacenter design.
• Experience working in a large ISP or cloud provider environment. Exposure to commodity Ethernet hardware (Broadcom/Mellanox), protocol experience with BGP/OSPF/IS-IS, TCP, IPv4, IPv6, DNS, DHCP, MPLS. Experience with networking protocols such as TCP/IP, VPN, DNS, DHCP, and SSL.
• Experience with Internet peering and inter-domain networking.
• Experience with scripting or automation and datacenter design - Python preferred, but must demonstrate knowledge in a scripting or compiled language.
• Experience with high level software design/development.
• Experience with automation systems, framework design/use and deployment.
• Experience with network modeling and programing - YANG, OpenConfig, NETCONF.
• Knowledge of network security design, system performance characterization and testing. Knowledge of data flow and telemetry design, deployment and operation.
• Excellent judgment in influence for product roadmap direction, features, and priorities. Leading individual contributor and a team member that provides direction and mentoring to others.
• Ability to use professional concepts and company objectives to resolve complex issues in creative and effective ways. Capable of working under limited supervision.
• Excellent organizational, verbal, and written communication skills.

Responsibilities

Key Responsibilities
Network Design, Development, and Validation:
-Designs and develops advanced network systems that support scalable enterprise, data center, or cloud environments, ensuring alignment with existing infrastructure patterns.
-Validates production networks and develops scaling strategies for diverse and evolving use cases across systems or services.
-Participates in solution architecture discussions, providing technical guidance on network requirements, tradeoffs, and design decisions.
-Identifies and assesses complex risks in network design and recommends mitigation strategies before deployment.
-Collaborates with vendors and internal stakeholders to align on hardware, firmware, software, and cloud network code requirements.
-Designs playbooks for resolving common and uncommon network issues involving moderately complex systems.
-Analyzes network workflows to identify inefficiencies and proposes scalable solutions to improve performance.
Automation and Scripting:
-Designs and builds advanced modules within automation frameworks to support testing, operations, and service reliability across multiple environments.
-Automates high-impact network tasks for production and lab environments, and optimizes repetitive, cross-team workflows to improve operational efficiency.
-Develops and maintains advanced dashboards, telemetry tools, and alerting systems to enable proactive monitoring and faster issue resolution.
-Writes, enhances, and documents reusable scripts that streamline routine network operations across teams and product domains.
-Modifies and extends infrastructure pipelines and configuration management tools to meet evolving requirements using existing playbooks and custom logic.
-Independently configures and extends tools to support new products or services, ensuring alignment with platform standards and integration best practices.
Testing and Quality Assurance:
-Designs and develops advanced test strategies and reusable test cases that validate complex network systems and enhance long-term network integrity and reliability.
-Leads team-level test practices and cross-functional collaboration, helping define robust testing protocols and ensuring consistency in execution across environments.
-Implements and refines post-incident validation methods, integrating break-fix outcomes and lessons learned into continuous test improvements.
-Reviews and approves L1 and L2 network changes, and presents high-impact changes to cross-team change management boards, ensuring risks are understood and mitigated.
-Partners with cross-functional teams to drive pre-production validation efforts, ensuring systems and environments meet compliance and deployment-readiness criteria.
-Prepares and delivers audit documentation and test evidence to support internal Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) processes, maintaining alignment with security and policy requirements.
Monitoring and Reliability:
-Works with others (e.g. monitoring teams) to customize dashboards, telemetry pipelines, and alerting systems, defining service level objectives (SLOs) based thresholds and metrics to monitor network health.
-Partners with monitoring and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) teams to refine alerting systems and enhance early detection of network anomalies and degradation.
-Leads incident response during support rotations, driving root cause analysis and coordinating cross-team resolution for escalated issues.
-Builds and improves internal tools that enable frontline support teams to efficiently respond to network failures and recurring operational issues.
Cross-Team Collaboration and Leadership:
-Drives test and deployment milestones in collaboration with project/program managers, adapting plans to address risks and ensure cross-team alignment.
-Mentors junior engineers and acts as a technical SME, providing hands-on guidance in resolving complex issues.
-Leads customer engagements on technical escalations and delivers clear, actionable root cause analysis (RCA) documentation.
-Influences team-level roadmap and architecture decisions, contributing solutions that align with broader engineering goals.
-Coordinates with vendors and internal teams to resolve standards misalignment, ensuring integration meets technical and operational expectations.
Performance and Capacity Management:
-Leads analysis of network performance metrics (e.g., latency, throughput, packet loss) to identify systemic inefficiencies and drive scalable improvements.
-Forecasts infrastructure needs using performance and capacity data, ensuring systems are prepared for anticipated traffic and service growth.
Core Responsibilities
Planning & Execution:
-Manages and coordinates moderately complex tasks, monitoring timelines and deliverables to ensure timely completion and adherence to requirements for a moderately-sized project or initiative. Efficiently delegates, monitors, and prioritizes work across multiple projects, providing technical oversight and adjusting plans to address shifts in resources or timelines.
Collaboration & Partnership: . click apply for full job details