Senior Staff Engineer, Product Software

Equinix•Dallas, TX

1d•$136,000 - $204,000

About The Position

We are seeking a highly experienced and technically accomplished Senior Staff Engineer to join our Network Platform Engineering (NPE) team. In this role, you will serve as the final gatekeeper of quality before Network Operating Systems (NOS), Fabric interconnection/IX features & new product features are deployed into our production environment. You will design rigorous test methodologies, build advanced staging topologies, and validate complex architectures to ensure the highest standards of reliability, scalability, and performance. This is a senior individual contributor role at the intersection of Network infrastructure & software engineering. You will partner closely with cross-functional stakeholders across Product, Engineering, Operations, and Observability teams to deliver solutions that accelerate the velocity and reliability of network certification, testing, and deployment pipelines. This is a high-impact, high-visibility position that requires strong engineering judgment, a bias for action, and the ability to influence technical direction across multiple teams and business units.

Requirements

7+ years of experience in Network Engineering and Automation
Bachelor’s in Electrical engineering, Electronics, Computer Engineering or Related Field preferred
Excellent understanding of OSI layers, hands-on experience with routing and switching in multi-vendor, large-scale environments (Required)
Deep proficiency in service provider and data center networking protocols
Routing: BGP (iBGP/eBGP, route policies, communities, route reflectors), OSPF, IS-IS, Bird
MPLS: LDP, RSVP-TE, Segment Routing (SR-MPLS, SRv6)
Overlay/Underlay: VXLAN, EVPN, L3VPN, L2VPN
Network virtualization: CNF, VNF, SR-IOV, DPDK
Networking Vendor : Nokia, Juniper, Cisco, Arrucs
Experience with network test equipment and traffic generators e.g Spirent, Keysight/Ixia, Spirent, Avalanche, IPerf, Trex etc.
Good programming proficiency in network automation tools (e.g., Python, Ansible, PyATS, Netmiko, REST API) alongside programmatic Interfaces (NETCONF, RESTCONF,Gnmi)
Familiarity with deploying, testing and troubleshooting network features within Docker container & Kubernetes (K8s) clusters
Experience with CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitHub, GitHub Actions, Jenkins) and DevOps best practices
Familiarity with Hybrid cloud architecture, Hands-on experience with AWS networking services (VPC, Transit Gateway, Direct Connect etc.)
Explore, evaluate, and integrate AI/ML tools and Large Language Models (LLMs) to streamline certification processes, including automated test case generation, log anomaly detection, and predictive root-cause analysis for lab failures

Nice To Haves

Relevant industry certifications (e.g., Cisco CCIE, Juniper JNCIE,AWS SA etc.) is a plus

Responsibilities

NOS & Feature Certification: Design, execute, and document comprehensive test plans to certify new NOS releases, Fabric interconnection & new product features before production deployment
Architecture Simulation: Build and maintain large-scale staging environments that replicate complex service provider and data center topologies
Regression & Scale/Performance Testing: Conduct interoperability, scalability, and high-availability testing across multi-vendor environments
Vendor Liaison: Collaborate directly with network vendors to track software bugs, validate hotfixes, and influence product roadmaps
Production Readiness: Partner with production engineering teams to develop safe deployment playbooks and rollback strategies
Architecture & Feature Research: Partner with architecture teams in researching research emerging network technologies, evaluate upcoming vendor roadmaps, and assess the feasibility of integrating new features, test and certify them before they are deployed into the production infrastructure
Network Engineering & Automation
Contribute to the architecture and design of next-generation network infrastructure solutions spanning Layers 1–3, ensuring scalability, reliability, and alignment with long-term platform strategy
Develop comprehensive test plans and certification strategies; lead hands-on technical deep-dives to verify that architectural designs, new NOS features, and customer use cases perform as expected in lab and production-equivalent environments
Act as a subject matter expert for service provider & DC networking technologies including BGP (iBGP/eBGP, policy, route reflectors), MPLS (LDP, RSVP, segment routing), EVPN, ISIS, and OSPF, SR, QoS, in multi-vendor environments
Excellent understanding of technologies such as VXLAN, EPL, EVPL, EPLAN, EVPLAN, EACCESS, ETREE in multi-vendor environments
Support vendor evaluations and feature gap analyses, provide technical guidance on network hardware and NOS selection aligned to architectural requirements
High proficiency in configuring, operating, and troubleshooting hardware and NOS platforms including Nokia, Juniper, Cisco, Arrcus etc.
Strong skills in network automation tools and programmatic interfaces to optimize certification workflows