Principal Engineer – Network

Job Description:

• Own the IP and optical architecture for CrowdStrike's global backbone, including connectivity to traditional and neocloud providers
• Set the multi-year roadmap governing network evolution, including traffic engineering strategy, capacity planning, and demand forecasting
• Drive major initiatives from funding case through implementation and long-term operational stewardship
• Act as the senior escalation resource in the 24x7 on-call rotation for major incidents
• Own platform selection for routing and optical hardware
• Work directly with vendor engineering teams to influence their roadmaps
• Engage director- and VP-level stakeholders across datacenter, application, and business teams
• Set the direction for network automation, infrastructure-as-code, telemetry, and analytics strategy
• Apply frontier and open-weight AI models to telemetry analysis and automated triage while keeping sensitive backbone data in-house
• Review senior engineers' designs and set technical standards
• Mentor senior engineers toward the principal level

Requirements:

• US Citizenship or Green Card holder status
• 12+ years designing, building, and operating large-scale backbone networks, with ownership of architecture at global scale
• Deep expertise in IP/MPLS core technologies: IS-IS, MP-BGP, segment routing (SR-MPLS/SRv6), PE/P architectures, MPLS-TE, VRFs, DDoS mitigation, CDN
• Deep expertise in optical transport: DWDM, coherent optics (400G/800G), ROADM architectures, amplifier design (EDFA/Raman), dispersion management, alien wavelengths
• Strong grounding in cloud networking: direct connectivity, multi-cloud routing, and hybrid cloud at scale across AWS, GCP, OCI, Azure, and neoclouds
• Working depth in adjacent infrastructure domains including virtualization, containers, databases, message queuing, and large-scale provisioning
• Proven ability to set network automation and IaC strategy
• Familiarity with applying frontier and open-weight AI models to network operations, including self-hosting open-weight models where data sensitivity requires it
• Experience operating or architecting networks within FedRAMP-authorized environments
• Track record of selecting, testing, and deploying networking hardware and software organization-wide 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 experience
• Proven experience utilizing AI technologies to enhance decision-making, streamline workflows and processes, improve efficiency, and drive business outcomes

Benefits:

• Market leader in compensation and equity awards
• Comprehensive physical and mental wellness programs
• Competitive vacation and holidays for recharge
• Paid parental and adoption leaves
• Professional development opportunities for all employees regardless of level or role
• Employee Networks, geographic neighborhood groups, and volunteer opportunities to build connections
• Vibrant office culture with world class amenities
• Health insurance
• 401k
• Paid time off
• Eligibility for bonuses
• Equity grants