Technology Engineer, Principal - Data Center Networking
Summary :
The Principal Technology Engineer provides enterprise-wide technical leadership and strategic direction for technology engineering initiatives. You’ll guide modernization efforts, establish engineering best practices, and ensure solutions are scalable, secure, and aligned with long-term business strategy. This role influences architectural standards and drives innovation across multiple systems and services.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
- Provide technical leadership for enterprise technology strategy, governance, and architecture alignment for the organization's Data Center networking environment.
- Lead the design, engineering, implementation, and modernization of enterprise Data Center network solutions supporting mission-critical business services.
- Define engineering standards, reference architectures, operational frameworks, and automation practices to improve operational efficiency, resiliency, scalability, and security.
- Partner with Enterprise Architecture, senior IT leadership, business stakeholders, and other Principal Technology Engineers to prioritize and deliver strategic technology initiatives.
- Collaborate across multiple technology domains, including Cloud, Security, Compute, Storage, Virtualization, Application Development, and Infrastructure Services, to ensure integrated enterprise solutions.
- Architect, implement, and support Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), Cisco Nexus switching platforms, Nexus Dashboard, and enterprise Data Center fabric technologies.
- Design and maintain highly available Layer 2 and Layer 3 network architectures utilizing VXLAN, EVPN, BGP, OSPF, VRFs, vPC, multicast, and related technologies.
- Lead Data Center modernization initiatives, infrastructure refreshes, network migrations, and strategic technology transformations.
- Provide technical leadership for Data Center expansion initiatives, including enterprise colocation strategies and integration with Equinix facilities.
- Partner with Network Engineering teams to support enterprise WAN evolution, including current Juniper SD-WAN deployments and migration toward Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN.
- Develop and maintain enterprise networking standards, engineering documentation, reference architectures, and operational best practices.
- Lead technical design reviews and provide architectural guidance for complex infrastructure initiatives.
- Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend solutions that improve performance, resiliency, security, scalability, and operational efficiency.
- Develop automation strategies utilizing APIs, scripting, Infrastructure-as-Code, and configuration management tools to improve operational consistency and efficiency.
- Mentor engineers across teams, fostering continuous improvement, technical excellence, and knowledge sharing.
- Perform advanced troubleshooting and root cause analysis for complex Data Center networking issues and serve as the highest level of technical escalation during major incidents.
- Maintain awareness of evolving networking technologies and industry best practices to support continuous improvement and enterprise innovation.
Skills and Competencies:
- Deep expertise in enterprise technology architecture and modernization practices
- Strategic mindset with ability to translate business goals into technical solutions
- Strong leadership, mentoring, and stakeholder influence skills
- Mastery of integration frameworks, and automation strategies
- Demonstrated ability to drive innovation across a complex technology landscape
- Demonstrated ability to influence enterprise technical direction without direct authority.
- Mastery of enterprise integration frameworks, automation strategies, and engineering best practices.
- Demonstrated ability to drive innovation across a complex technology landscape.
- Expert knowledge of Cisco Data Center networking technologies, including Cisco ACI, Cisco Nexus 9000 Series, NX-OS, and Nexus Dash