Principal Network Engineer

Oracle•Abilene, TX

10d•$114,600 - $234,600

About The Position

The Principal Network Engineer designs, implements, and operates resilient L3/L4 network services across data centers and cloud environments. The role has influence beyond the immediate team, leads moderately complex projects, drives automation design discussions, and contributes to design and architecture improvements. The engineer mentors junior engineers, contributes to team decisions, and works with SRE, platform, and security partners to deliver secure, compliant, highly available network services with measurable impact. The position covers network topology and overlay design; implementation and operation of cloud networking; security controls and compliance guardrails; automation, CI/CD, and infrastructure as code; cross-team operations; and technical documentation and standards. It also includes leading portions of on-call response and complex change events, coordinating with related teams, and maintaining design documents, diagrams, runbooks, and inventories. Candidates must meet one of the stated education and experience alternatives: 11 years of relevant experience; a relevant bachelor's degree and 7 years of network engineering experience; a relevant master's degree and 5 years of relevant experience; or a relevant doctorate and 3 years of relevant experience.

Requirements

Advanced knowledge of L2/L3/L4 networking, IP addressing and subnetting, BGP/OSPF/IS-IS, EVPN/VXLAN, ECMP, QoS, and NAT.
Strong DNS/DHCP fundamentals and knowledge of IPv6 design and transition patterns.
Proficiency with VPC/VNet, route tables, NAT gateways, PrivateLink/service endpoints, transit and peering, hybrid and inter-cloud connectivity, L4/L7 load balancing, and service insertion.
Knowledge of zero-trust segmentation, ACLs/policies, IPsec/TLS, DDoS/WAF patterns, audit frameworks, evidence practices, and rigorous change and access controls.
Experience with Terraform modules, Ansible playbooks, Git, CI/CD, scripting such as Python, API-driven platforms, policy-as-code, testing, and automated validation.
Ability to design and operationalize SNMP/telemetry, NetFlow/IPFIX, and flow logs; define SLIs/SLOs; and perform capacity modeling and performance tuning.
Seasoned experience in incident management, on-call work, RCAs, and structured change management, including leading complex maintenance events.
Clear technical writing, effective review skills, ability to influence related teams, and comfort presenting trade-offs to stakeholders.
Sound judgment in solving multi-variable problems; ability to lead small-scale improvement initiatives and evaluate alternatives and risks for safe adoption.
One of the following education and experience combinations: 11 years in Network Engineering or a related field; a relevant bachelor's degree and 7 years in network engineering; a relevant master's degree and 5 years in network engineering or a related field; or a relevant doctorate and 3 years in network engineering or a related field.

Responsibilities

Lead designs for IP addressing, routing policies (BGP/OSPF/IS-IS), EVPN/VXLAN fabrics, and SDN overlays across on-premises and cloud environments.
Define high-availability, ECMP, and traffic-engineering patterns; validate them through lab or sandbox testing, failure modeling, and staged rollouts.
Write design documents and lead reviews with related teams; reduce change risk through method-of-procedure, rollback, and verification plans.
Implement and operate VPC/VNet topologies, subnets, routing tables, NAT, transit or hub-and-spoke connectivity, PrivateLink/service endpoints, and inter-cloud connectivity.
Design and tune L4/L7 load balancing and service insertion, including proxies and firewalls, to meet SLOs and cost targets.
Maintain consistent network policy and connectivity across environments using standard blueprints and golden configurations.
Engineer segmentation, ACLs and policies, encryption, and DDoS/WAF integrations aligned with zero-trust principles.
Implement compliance guardrails for change control, least-privilege access, and evidence collection, partnering with security and GRC teams on audits.
Review rulebases and routing policies periodically, removing shadow or duplicate rules and reducing attack surface.
Develop reusable Terraform modules and Ansible playbooks; enforce code reviews, linting, policy-as-code, and test gates in pipelines.
Build API- and scripting-based validation and drift-detection tools; integrate automated rollbacks and canary changes.
Promote GitOps practices, configuration data modeling, and an inventory source of truth.
Partner with SRE, platform, and security teams on architecture reviews, incident response, post-incident remediation, and capacity planning.
Lead portions of on-call response and complex change events, coordinating with related teams to minimize risk and downtime.
Contribute to cross-LOB standards, reference architectures, and service-onboarding patterns.
Produce and maintain design documents, network diagrams, runbooks, and inventories, ensuring traceability to requirements and controls.
Facilitate and participate in design and change reviews, capture decisions and lessons learned, and improve patterns and modules.
Mentor junior engineers through code and document reviews, pairing, and knowledge-sharing.

Benefits

Medical, dental, and vision insurance, including expert medical opinion
Short-term and long-term disability
Life insurance and AD&D
Supplemental life insurance for employees, spouses, and children
Health care and dependent care Flexible Spending Accounts
Pre-tax commuter and parking benefits
401(k) Savings and Investment Plan with company match
Flexible or accrued vacation, depending on eligibility and position
11 paid holidays
Paid sick leave
Paid parental leave
Adoption assistance
Employee Stock Purchase Plan
Financial planning and group legal benefits
Voluntary auto, homeowner, and pet insurance
The posting notes possible eligibility for bonus, equity, and compensation deferral.