Network Engineer

Title: Principal Network Engineer

Location: Alameda CA

Contract: 12 months+ Extendable

Pay Rate: $80/hr. -$90/hr. (The rate may be negotiable based on experience, education, geographic location, and other factors)

Job Description:

We are seeking an experienced Principal Network Reliability Engineer to lead the design, automation, and continuous improvement of highly available enterprise network infrastructure. This role focuses on building resilient, scalable, and secure networks using automation-first practices, Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC), observability, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles. The ideal candidate will drive network architecture strategy, mentor engineering teams, and lead large-scale initiatives that improve operational excellence, reliability, and performance.

Key Responsibilities

• Design highly available, resilient, and fault-tolerant enterprise network infrastructure.
• Develop automation-first network operations using Python, Ansible, Terraform, Git, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Implement Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC), Configuration-as-Code, and Network-as-Code methodologies.
• Build automated validation, deployment, rollback, remediation, and recovery workflows.
• Design telemetry, monitoring, synthetic testing, health checks, and alerting solutions to proactively identify network issues.
• Utilize observability tools, logs, metrics, traces, packet captures, and flow data to troubleshoot complex network problems.
• Lead network change management with pre/post validation, staged deployments, canary releases, and automated rollback strategies.
• Develop safeguards including configuration validation, policy compliance, peer reviews, and automated testing to reduce operational risk.
• Improve network reliability by reducing MTTD, MTTR, and service-impacting incidents.
• Balance network reliability, security, scalability, performance, and operational efficiency in architectural decisions.
• Lead architecture strategy, automation frameworks, reliability standards, and operational best practices.
• Drive transformation from reactive network operations to proactive reliability engineering.
• Lead major cross-functional technical initiatives and provide guidance to engineering and leadership teams.
• Own documentation including architecture diagrams, runbooks, operational procedures, and technical standards.
• Lead incident response, root cause analysis, and continuous service improvement initiatives.
• Mentor engineers on automation, reliability engineering, operational excellence, and cloud networking.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree with 13+ years of experience, Master's degree with 11+ years, Associate degree with 15+ years, or equivalent experience.
• 12+ years of enterprise network engineering or network administration experience in highly available production environments.
• Strong experience designing enterprise network architecture and leading large-scale infrastructure initiatives.
• Hands-on expertise with Cisco and Juniper routing & switching.
• Advanced experience with Palo Alto Firewalls and next-generation firewall technologies.
• Strong knowledge of AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud networking.
• Experience with Python, Go, Bash scripting, and automation tools such as Ansible, Terraform, and Chef.
• Experience with GitHub/GitLab, CI/CD, Infrastructure-as-Code, and automation frameworks.
• Knowledge of Splunk, SolarWinds, or other monitoring and logging platforms.
• Experience with LAN/WAN architecture, SD-WAN, VPNs, routing protocols, redundancy, and disaster recovery.
• Strong understanding of network observability, telemetry, and reliability engineering principles.
• Experience working in Agile environments using JIRA/JSM.
• Excellent troubleshooting, leadership, mentoring, and cross-functional communication skills.

Preferred Skills

• Network Reliability Engineering (NRE) or Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) experience.
• Experience implementing enterprise automation and self-healing network solutions.
• Knowledge of IT governance, security frameworks, and compliance standards.
• Cloud migration and hybrid networking expertise.
• Industry certifications such as CCIE, CCNP, JNCIE, PCNSE, AWS Advanced Networking, or equivalent are preferred.

Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled

Benefit offerings available for our associates include medical, dental, vision, life insurance, short-term disability, additional voluntary benefits, an EAP program, commuter benefits, and a 401K plan. Our benefit offerings provide employees the flexibility to choose the type of coverage that meets their individual needs. In addition, our associates may be eligible for paid leave including Paid Sick Leave or any other paid leave required by Federal, State, or local law, as well as Holiday pay where applicable. Disclaimer: These benefit offerings do not apply to client-recruited jobs and jobs that are direct hires to a client.

To read our Candidate Privacy Information Statement, which explains how we will use your information, please visit

https://www.akkodis.com/en/privacy-policy

The Company will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records in accordance with federal, state, and local laws and/or security clearance requirements, including, as applicable:

· The California Fair Chance Act

· Los Angeles City Fair Chance Ordinance

· Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers

· San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance