Senior Optical Network Engineer II

CoreWeave•Livingston, NJ

1d•$165,000 - $220,000•Onsite

About The Position

CoreWeave is seeking experienced Optical Network Engineers to help design, build, operate, and evolve the optical network that underpins its global IP backbone. This is a senior engineering role for individuals with deep, hands-on experience in designing and operating production optical networks. The role involves working across the complete optical lifecycle, including dark fiber and photonic engineering, DWDM system design, deployment, capacity expansion, automation, monitoring, and production operations. Collaboration with IP Backbone Engineering and Network Architecture is key to ensure integrated design of optical and IP layers for predictable capacity, physical diversity, failure isolation, and resiliency. The ideal candidate understands the underlying optical network, not just platform configuration.

Requirements

Significant hands-on experience designing, deploying, and operating large-scale production optical networks.
Strong hands-on experience with both Ciena and Nokia optical networking platforms, including production deployment, configuration, troubleshooting, software lifecycle, hardware troubleshooting, and operational support.
Strong experience with dark-fiber networks, including: Fiber characterization and acceptance testing, Optical loss budgets, ILA site design, OTDR testing and interpretation, Connector and splice loss, Reflectance and ORL, Chromatic dispersion, Polarization-related impairments, Fiber types and characteristics, Physical route diversity and shared-risk analysis, Troubleshooting degraded and failed fiber spans.
Deep understanding of DWDM and optical transmission technologies, including: Coherent optical transmission, C-band and L-band systems, ROADMs, EDFAs and Raman amplification, Coherent pluggable optics, 400G and 800G optical transmission, ZR and ZR+ technologies, FEC and pre-/post-FEC performance, OSNR and ESNR, Q-factor and Q-margin, Chromatic dispersion, PMD and PDL, Optical power management, Wavelength and spectrum planning, Amplification and regeneration, Alien wavelengths and multi-vendor optical environments.
Comfortable taking a proposed dark-fiber route and determining how to turn it into a production optical system.
Significant hands-on experience with optical platforms from both Ciena (e.g., Waveserver, 6500/RLS) and Nokia (optical transport, photonic line systems, coherent optics).
Experience designing and operating multi-vendor optical environments is highly desirable.
Experience with IP networking is strongly preferred, understanding how large IP backbones consume optical infrastructure and how failures propagate between the optical and IP layers.
Experience with Python or another programming language is strongly preferred, including: Python, REST APIs, NETCONF/YANG, gNMI, OpenConfig, Network automation frameworks, Configuration generation and validation, Git-based engineering workflows, Telemetry and time-series monitoring systems.
Comfortable using software and automation to solve network engineering problems.

Nice To Haves

Experience with BGP, IS-IS, MPLS, Segment Routing, IP backbone architectures, Juniper, Nokia, or similar service-provider routing platforms.
Experience with Python or another programming language, including: Python, REST APIs, NETCONF/YANG, gNMI, OpenConfig, Network automation frameworks, Configuration generation and validation, Git-based engineering workflows, Telemetry and time-series monitoring systems.

Responsibilities

Design, engineer and operate long-haul, metro, and data-center interconnect optical networks.
Engineer DWDM systems across dark-fiber infrastructure.
Design optical paths including amplification, regeneration, wavelength planning, spectrum allocation, and optical power budgets.
Engineer and operate C-band and L-band optical systems.
Deploy, configure, operate, and troubleshoot Nokia, Ciena and other optical platforms.
Commission new fiber spans, wavelengths, and optical systems.
Perform fiber characterization and validate new dark-fiber routes before production deployment.
Analyze span loss, connector loss, reflectance, OSNR, Q-factor/Q-margin, BER, and other optical performance characteristics.
Troubleshoot complex optical impairments and fiber-related issues using platform telemetry and appropriate optical test equipment.
Design amplifier chains and understand EDFA and Raman amplification requirements.
Engineer coherent optical transmission across metro and long-haul networks.
Plan and execute network capacity expansions.
Develop standards for optical network architecture, deployment, commissioning, and operations.
Build monitoring and telemetry that identifies optical degradation before it becomes a production-impacting failure.
Participate in incident response and root-cause analysis for optical network events.
Work directly with dark-fiber providers, carriers, data-center operators, and equipment vendors.
Evaluate and qualify new optical platforms, coherent optics, and photonic technologies.
Develop automation and tooling that allows the optical network to scale without equivalent growth in manual operational work.
Mentor other engineers and help establish the technical standards and engineering culture of a new optical networking team.