Principal Network Service Engineer

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Equinix is the world’s digital infrastructure company®, shortening the path to connectivity to enable the innovations that enrich our work, life and planet.

A place where tech thinkers and future builders turn bold ideas into breakthrough experiences, we welcome your unique perspective.Help us challenge assumptions, uncover bias, and remove barriers—because progress starts with fresh ideas. You’ll find belonging, purpose, and a team that welcomes you—because when you feel valued, you’re empowered to do your best work.

Job Summary
The Principal Network Engineer is a senior technical leader within the Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) organization, responsible for designing, scaling, and maintaining highly reliable, self-healing network platforms. This role integrates AI driven operations, predictive analytics, observability, and advanced automation to ensure the network meets strict availability, performance, and resiliency standards. The engineer translates business and technical requirements into scalable network capabilities, defines SLOs/SLIs for mission critical services, and delivers engineering artifacts for implementation teams. This role mentors engineers, supports architectural decisions, and drives continuous improvement.

Responsibilities

• Define, maintain, and own network SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets across critical services

• Lead major incident response efforts with AI assisted diagnostics and blameless postmortems

• Maintain network observability frameworks including telemetry pipelines, distributed tracing, and ML-based anomaly detection

• Reduce operational delays through automation, AI copilots, LLM generated playbooks, and self-healing workflows

AI-Driven Network Engineering

• Integrate AIOps platforms for predictive detection, anomaly correlation, and automated remediation

• Implement generative AI workflows for script creation, documentation, and troubleshooting

• Develop ML based analytics pipelines for traffic modeling, baselining, and forecasting

Deployment & Engineering Leadership

• Translate requirements into scalable network capacity and capability designs.

• Deliver engineering artifacts and guide implementation teams

• Lead live deployments of multi-vendor network solutions and large-scale migrations

• Maintain guidelines, templates, and automation for SRE and Ops teams

• Build repeatable workflows that support automation-first operations

• Train and mentor engineering teams through workshops and technical boot camps

Product Lifecycle Engagements

• Provide feedback across Product, Development, and QA based on operational insights

• Participate in design reviews, functional specs, and cross-functional architecture discussions

• Support POCs, device testing, API validation, etc.

• Provide deployment feedback, validate automation logic, and assess system readiness

Service Delivery & Fulfillment

• Deliver fulfillment for network and datacenter services using automated workflows

• Ensure high-quality provisioning and seamless end-to-end service operations

• Collaborate with escalation teams, order fulfillment, and professional services

• Analyze fulfillment KPIs and drive improvements in efficiency and reliability

• Identify and resolve root causes impacting customer experience

Innovation & Continuous Improvement

• Lead innovation initiatives across products, processes, and engineering teams

• Deploy features and automation frameworks that improve reliability and customer satisfaction

• Present at industry events and train internal teams in new developments

• Provide cross-industry insights to keep engineering practices aligned with modern trends

Mentorship & Leadership of SRE Engineers

• Mentor SRE engineers in networking, automation, observability, and reliability engineering best practices

• Coach engineers in Service Level Objective (SLO) ownership, incident response, and resilience engineering

• Review automation scripts and design proposals, elevating engineering quality

• Lead training in AI-assisted operations, AIOps tooling, and automated remediation

• Develop skill progression plans and identify growth opportunities

• Mentor during complex incidents and post-incident analysis

• Foster a culture of learning, excellence, and cross-team collaboration

Qualifications

Required

• 7+ years in large scale networking, SRE, Net/DevOps, or related engineering roles

• Expertise in routing, switching, BGP, IGP, MPLS, EVPN, and datacenter architectures

• Proficiency in Python, automation frameworks, and other automation tooling

• Strong understanding of observability including metrics, logs, traces, and telemetry

• Experience troubleshooting distributed systems

Preferred

• Experience with AIOps

• Knowledge of ML concepts

• Experience with self-healing or event-driven automation

• Experience presenting or publishing work in SRE, automation, or networking

This posting is for a backfill position, meaning it is to fill an existing vacancy within our organization.

The targeted pay range for this position in the following location is / locations are:

United States - Redwood City Office GHQ : 163,000 - 245,000 USD / Annual

United States - Dallas Infomart Office DAI : 136,000 - 204,000 USD / Annual

Canada - Toronto Office TRO : 131,000 - 181,000 CAD / Annual

Our pay ranges reflect the minimum and maximum target for new hire pay for the full-time position determined by role, level, and location.The pay range shown is based on our compensation structure in place at the time of posting and may be updated periodically based on business needs. Individual pay is based on additional factors including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education and/or training.

The targeted pay range listed reflects the base pay only and does not include bonus, equity, or benefits. Employees are eligible for bonus, and equity may be offered depending on the position.

Equinix Benefits

As an employee, you become important to Equinix’s success. We ensure all your benefits are in line with our core values: competitive, inclusive, sustainable, connected and efficient. We keep them competitive within the current marketplace to ensure we’re providing you with the best package possible. So, wherever you are in your career and life, you’ll be able to enhance your experience and bring your whole self to work.

Employee Assistance Program: An Employee Assistance program is available to all employees.

US Benefits: - Insurance: You may enroll in health, life, disability and voluntary plans that are designed for you and your eligible family members. - Retirement: You and Equinix may contribute to a retirement plan to help you plan for your financial future. - Paid Time Off (PTO) and Paid Holidays: You will receive an accrued amount of PTO each pay period along with various paid holidays for you to rest and recharge. Eligibility requirements apply to some benefits. Benefits are subject to change and may be subject to specific plan or program terms. Canada Core Benefits: - Insurance: You may enroll in healthcare coverage that is designed to complement the provincial healthcare system, along with life, disability and optional benefit plans that are designed for you and your eligible family members. - Retirement: You may also enroll in Equinix-sponsored retirement or savings plans: Defined Contribution Pension Plan (DCPP), Group Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) and Tax-Free Savings Plan (TSFA). - Vacation and Paid Holidays: Equinix offers both vacation and personal time, along with various paid holidays for you to rest and recharge. Eligibility requirements apply to some benefits. Benefits are subject to specific plan or program terms, and to change at Equinix discretion.

Equinix is committed to ensuring that our employment process is open to all individuals, including those with a disability. If you are a qualified candidate and need assistance or an accommodation, please let us know by completing .

Equinix is an Equal Employment Opportunity and, in the U.S., an Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to unlawful consideration of race, color, religion, creed, national or ethnic origin, ancestry, place of birth, citizenship, sex, pregnancy / childbirth or related medical conditions, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital or domestic partnership status, age, veteran or military status, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, political / organizational affiliation, status as a victim or family member of a victim of crime or abuse, or any other status protected by applicable law.

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