Sr. Manager, Network Engineering

Clearwater Analytics•Chicago, IL

1d•$171,000 - $244,150

About The Position

The Sr. Manager, Network Engineering is a hands-on technical leadership role responsible for the Network Engineering and Systems Engineering squads and the strategy and operation of the company’s infrastructure platform. The role spans carrier-class networking, data center operations, cloud integration, Linux systems, virtualization, container orchestration, and financial technology. The manager will set technical direction, hire and mentor engineers, and remain directly involved in architecture decisions, technology evaluations, and complex problem-solving, particularly in network engineering. The role works closely with software engineering, security, DevOps, data operations, and client connectivity teams to operate a hybrid on-premises and public-cloud environment. It serves as a technical escalation point for complex infrastructure issues and leads incident response and reliability improvements for a platform serving financial services clients. The position also partners with Security and Compliance to support applicable audit and regulatory requirements.

Requirements

10+ years of hands-on experience in network engineering, systems administration, infrastructure operations, or DevOps, including at least 5 years in a senior/lead technical role managing infrastructure at enterprise scale.
3+ years of people management experience, with demonstrated success building and scaling engineering teams.
2+ years in a financial services or FinTech environment.
Deep hands-on expertise in BGP, MPLS, OSPF, and other dynamic routing protocols, with demonstrated ability to design and operate data center LAN/WAN networks at scale.
Production-grade hands-on experience with Cisco data center LAN switching, Arista edge routing, and Palo Alto firewalls, including vendor-specific CLI and configurations.
Strong MPLS design, implementation, and troubleshooting experience; experience with MPLS traffic engineering, Fast Reroute (FRR), or segment routing.
Experience with Layer 2 technologies including VPLS, multicast, spanning tree, VXLAN, and dark fiber terminations; understanding of next-generation data center network architectures.
Hands-on Linux systems administration with RHEL and Debian-based distributions, strong command-line proficiency, and systems diagnostic ability.
Production-grade Kubernetes cluster operations experience, including workload scheduling, resource governance, and service mesh configuration.
Infrastructure automation experience with Ansible, Terraform, Salt, or equivalent IaC tooling, including designing automation frameworks.
CI/CD platform expertise with GitLab CI, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Spinnaker, or equivalent, and understanding of software delivery pipeline design.
Hands-on experience with observability tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, Elastic Stack (ELK/EFK), CheckMk, or equivalent monitoring and log aggregation platforms.
Strong networking fundamentals in TCP/IP, DNS, TLS/PKI, load balancing, VPN, and security architectures, particularly for host-based and data center environments.
Experience working with Tier 1/Tier 2 global ISPs and configuring BGP routing with external partners and clients.
Familiarity with financial data connectivity, including FIX, SWIFT, SFTP/FTPS workflows, market data feeds, and custodian integration patterns.
Experience with SOC 2, PCI-DSS, or equivalent compliance frameworks, including audit evidence, access control, and change management.
Scripting and automation skills in Python, Bash, Perl, or equivalent, and comfort with API-driven infrastructure management.
Strong communication skills, including explaining technical trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders, leading technical discussions, and writing clear documentation.
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice To Haves

Experience with hybrid and public cloud platforms, including AWS EC2, EKS, RDS, and S3; cost governance and FinOps awareness.
Familiarity with server virtualization platforms such as ProxMox, VMware vSphere, or equivalent.
Hands-on experience with extranet providers and services such as TNS, MegaPort, and ECX.
Working knowledge of relational databases such as MySQL and PostgreSQL, and time-series data stores in financial contexts.
Java application understanding, including JVM internals, tuning, and garbage-collection analysis.
Exposure to financial regulatory environments such as SEC, FINRA, or MiFID II.
Experience with secrets management and certificate lifecycle tools such as HashiCorp Vault, CyberArk, or Let's Encrypt.
Leadership certifications or training, such as Certified Scrum Product Owner or leadership coaching.
Industry certifications such as CCNP, CCIE, JNCIP, JNCIE, RHCA, CKA/CKAD, or equivalent; CCIE is highly desired.

Responsibilities

Lead, mentor, and scale the Network Engineering and Systems Engineering squads; set technical direction, hire high performers, and foster operational excellence and continuous improvement.
Own network infrastructure strategy, including Cisco data center LAN architecture, Arista edge routing, Palo Alto edge security, and BGP strategy for external connectivity.
Drive MPLS strategy, implementation, and optimization across the hybrid on-premises/public-cloud environment, including traffic engineering and failover mechanisms.
Lead data center network operations, manage LAN/WAN/MAN networks, oversee connectivity provisioning, and handle technology reviews and purchasing decisions.
Own systems engineering across Linux administration, hypervisor and VM operations, Kubernetes strategy and operations, CI/CD architecture, and infrastructure-as-code frameworks.
Design monitoring, alerting, and log aggregation strategies and establish SLIs, SLOs, and SLAs aligned with platform requirements.
Architect and operate the hybrid cloud footprint, including on-premises infrastructure, AWS integration, co-location facilities, connectivity, and failover.
Promote infrastructure automation and tooling, including Ansible, Terraform, or equivalent IaC frameworks, configuration management, and infrastructure versioning.
Support financial data connectivity, including market data feeds, custodian integrations, FIX/SWIFT/SFTP protocols, and third-party data vendors.
Partner with Security and Compliance to support SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and applicable financial industry regulatory requirements.
Evaluate technologies and vendors and make architectural recommendations based on operational maturity, business impact, and team capability.
Lead incident response for platform-level outages, conduct root cause analysis, and drive permanent fixes for systemic reliability issues.