Principal Engineer - Network (Remote)

CrowdStrike•USA CA Remote, CA

4d•$195,000 - $290,000•Remote

About The Position

As a global leader in cybersecurity, CrowdStrike protects the people, processes and technologies that drive modern organizations. Since 2011, our mission hasn’t changed — we’re here to stop breaches, and we’ve redefined modern security with the world’s most advanced AI-native platform. We work on large scale distributed systems, processing almost 3 trillion events per day and this traffic is growing daily. Our customers span all industries, and they count on CrowdStrike to keep their businesses running, their communities safe and their lives moving forward. We're proud to work for a mission-driven company leveraging AI to transform the way we work. CrowdStrikers drive their careers through flexibility and autonomy while also being expected to contribute to a culture of responsible AI adoption, experimentation, and innovation. We use an AI-first mindset as a force multiplier to proactively and continuously accelerate execution, build expertise, uncover insights, and solve complex problems. We’re always looking to add talented CrowdStrikers to the team who have limitless passion, a relentless focus on innovation and a fanatical commitment to our customers, our community and each other. Ready to join a mission that matters? The future of cybersecurity starts with you. About the Role: You will own the IP and optical architecture for CrowdStrike's global backbone, including connectivity to traditional and neocloud providers. You'll set the multi-year roadmap governing its evolution, including traffic engineering strategy, capacity planning, and demand forecasting for the network as a whole. You'll drive the initiatives that matter most to the business, from funding case through implementation and long-term operational stewardship, and act as the senior escalation resource in the 24x7 on-call rotation when an incident exceeds the depth of the engineers already on it.

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 major hyperscalers (AWS, GCP, OCI, Azure) and neoclouds (e.g., CoreWeave, Cerebras)
Working depth in adjacent infrastructure domains (virtualization, containers, databases, message queuing, large-scale provisioning) sufficient to architect across boundaries
Proven ability to set, not just execute, network automation and IaC strategy
Familiarity with applying frontier and open-weight AI models to network operations (e.g., telemetry analysis, automated triage, ChatOps tooling), 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 (Juniper, Infinera, Nokia, Arista, Cisco, etc.)
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.

Responsibilities

Own the IP and optical architecture for CrowdStrike's global backbone, including connectivity to traditional and neocloud providers.
Set the multi-year roadmap governing its evolution, including traffic engineering strategy, capacity planning, and demand forecasting for the network as a whole.
Drive initiatives from funding case through implementation and long-term operational stewardship.
Act as the senior escalation resource in the 24x7 on-call rotation when an incident exceeds the depth of the engineers already on it.
Own platform selection for routing and optical hardware, working directly with vendor engineering teams to influence their roadmaps.
Engage director- and VP-level stakeholders across datacenter, application, and business teams to keep network strategy ahead of the company's growth.
Set the direction for network automation and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Ansible, CI/CD, GitOps).
Set the direction for telemetry and analytics strategy, increasingly including frontier and open-weight AI models for tasks like telemetry analysis and automated triage, with sensitive backbone data kept in-house.
Review senior engineers' designs, set the standards they build against, and mentor them toward this level.

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
Great Place to Work Certified™ across the globe
Health insurance
401k
Paid time off