Principal Network Engineer

Oracle•Abilene, TX

About The Position

Designs, implements, and operates resilient L3/L4 network services across data centers and cloud environments, with influence beyond the immediate team. The role leads moderately complex projects, drives automation design discussions, and contributes to design and architecture improvements. It mentors junior engineers, contributes to team decisions, and collaborates with SRE, platform, and security partners to deliver secure, compliant, highly available network services with measurable impact on team and group outcomes. The position leads network topology and overlay designs across on-premises and cloud environments; implements and operates cloud networking; engineers security and compliance controls; and develops automation and infrastructure as code. It also partners across teams on architecture, operations, incident response, capacity planning, standards, and service onboarding. The engineer produces and maintains design documents, diagrams, runbooks, and inventories, facilitates reviews, and mentors colleagues. Oracle lists a U.S. hiring range of $114,600 to $234,600 per annum. The role may also be eligible for bonus, equity, and compensation deferral. Oracle describes a comprehensive benefits package for U.S. employees.

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 cloud networking, including VPC/VNet, route tables, NAT gateways, PrivateLink or service endpoints, transit or peering, hybrid and inter-cloud connectivity, and L4/L7 load balancing and service insertion.
Knowledge of zero-trust segmentation, ACLs and policies, IPsec/TLS, DDoS/WAF patterns, audit frameworks, evidence practices, and rigorous change and access controls.
Experience with Terraform and Ansible at the module or playbook level, Git and CI/CD, scripting such as Python, API-driven platforms, policy as code, unit and integration testing, and automated validation.
Experience designing and operationalizing SNMP/telemetry, NetFlow/IPFIX, and flow logs; defining SLIs/SLOs; capacity modeling; and performance tuning.
Seasoned incident-management, on-call, RCA, and structured change-management experience, including the ability to lead complex maintenance events.
Clear technical writing, effective review skills, ability to influence related teams, and comfort presenting trade-offs to stakeholders.
Judgment in solving multi-variable problems; ability to lead small-scale innovation or improvement initiatives and evaluate alternatives and potential impacts for safe adoption.
One of the following education and experience combinations: 11 years of experience in Network Engineering or a related field; a bachelor's degree in a listed or related field and 7 years of network engineering experience; a master's degree in a listed or related field and 5 years of network engineering or related experience; or a doctorate in a listed or related field and 3 years of network engineering or related experience.
Certain U.S.-based or U.S. customer- or client-facing roles may require compliance with applicable immunization or occupational-health mandates and/or drug testing.
U.S.-based employees must complete identity verification involving collection and processing of biometric information; accommodations may be granted following an individualized assessment.

Nice To Haves

The preferred qualifications section repeats the listed education and experience combinations: 11 years of Network Engineering or related experience; a bachelor's degree in a listed or related field and 7 years of network engineering experience; a master's degree in a listed or related field and 5 years of network engineering or related experience; or a doctorate in a listed or related field and 3 years of network engineering or related experience.

Responsibilities

Lead designs for IP addressing, routing policies (BGP/OSPF/IS-IS), EVPN/VXLAN fabrics, and SDN overlays spanning 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.
Author design documents and drive reviews with related teams; reduce change risk with method-of-procedure, rollback, and verification plans.
Implement and operate VPC/VNet topologies, subnets, routing tables, NAT, transit or hub-and-spoke connectivity, PrivateLink or service endpoints, and inter-cloud connectivity.
Design and tune L4/L7 load balancing and service insertion, including proxies and firewalls, to meet defined SLOs and cost targets.
Promote consistent network policy and connectivity across environments through standard blueprints and golden configurations.
Engineer segmentation, ACLs and policies, encryption, and DDoS/WAF integrations aligned with zero-trust principles.
Embed compliance guardrails, including change control, least-privilege access, and evidence collection; partner with security and GRC teams on audits.
Review rulebases and routing policies periodically, eliminating shadow or duplicate rules and reducing the attack surface.
Develop reusable Terraform modules and Ansible playbooks; enforce code reviews, linting, policy as code, and pipeline test gates.
Build API- and scripting-based validation and drift-detection tooling; integrate automated rollbacks and canary changes.
Champion 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 evolve patterns and modules accordingly.
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 employee eligibility and position
11 paid holidays
Paid sick leave: 72 hours upon hire, refreshed annually, with unused balances carrying over up to a 112-hour cap
Paid parental leave
Adoption assistance
Employee Stock Purchase Plan
Financial planning and group legal benefits
Voluntary auto, homeowner, and pet insurance
Potential bonus, equity, and compensation deferral eligibility