Senior Director, Network Development

Network Engineering Leader

Accountable for strategy, architecture governance, and operational excellence across a large, multi-region network engineering group. Sets direction for network reliability, performance, security, and automation at enterprise scale. Harmonizes network strategy across groups and with organization, partnering with senior and executive stakeholders to deliver resilient, compliant, and cost-efficient networks for data center, cloud, WAN, and edge. Directs complex, cross-functional programs that improve availability, latency, throughput, and total cost of ownership; embeds automation-first operations, rigorous validation, and continuous improvement across the portfolio. Builds and develops a high-performing, inclusive leadership bench; owns budgets, vendor strategy, and KPI reporting; ensures delivery against SLOs and regulatory requirements.

Key Responsibilities

• Network Design, Development, and Validation:
• Define and govern multi-year architecture and design standards across cloud, data center, WAN, and edge; ensure designs meet resilience, security, and compliance objectives.
• Sponsor transformational programs (e.g., SDN/intent-based networking, zero-trust segmentation) and enforce design reviews, configuration baselines, and lifecycle policies across regions.
• Establish enterprise validation strategy for new architectures, hardware/firmware, and software at scale; require pre-production proofs, pilot rollouts, and rollback plans.
• Align network roadmap with product and platform strategies; balance innovation with reliability, cost, and regulatory constraints.
• Automation and Scripting:
• Set group strategy for network automation frameworks, pipelines, and "policy as code"; standardize reusable modules, guardrails, and CI/CD for network changes.
• Prioritize automation investments that reduce toil, increase change velocity, and improve MTTR; track benefits through measurable KPIs and error budget adherence.
• Ensure secure-by-design automation practices, including access controls, audit trails, and compliance checkpoints; drive adoption across all regions and teams in group.
• Testing and Quality Assurance:
• Own group wide test strategy and acceptance criteria for configurations, images, and changes; mandate automated regression, canary/blue-green rollouts, and production-safety checks.
• Institutionalize quality gates and change readiness reviews; ensure RCAs and corrective actions are systematically integrated into test plans and playbooks.
• Run governance forums to assess test coverage, defect escape, and reliability risk; direct group-wide Corrective and Preventive Actions priorities and timelines.
• Monitoring and Reliability:
• Define network health strategy, SLOs, SLIs, and error budgets across services and regions; enforce consistent telemetry, alerting, and runbook standards.
• Lead executive-level incident management for high-severity events; require consistent RCA quality, cross-org learnings, and durable remediation at scale.
• Drive resiliency investments (e.g., redundancy, fault isolation, DR exercises); validate business continuity and recovery outcomes against policy and regulatory needs.
• Cross-Team Collaboration and Leadership:
• Align network strategy with Cloud/Infra, SRE, Security, Product, and Finance; chair architecture and change boards to manage dependencies and risks.
• Build leadership capacity through coaching, succession planning, and inclusive practices; set clear expectations for managers and technical leaders across group.
• Own strategic vendor relationships and contract negotiations; drive joint roadmaps, performance SLAs, and remediation plans for systemic issues.
• Performance and Capacity Management:
• Govern capacity planning and forecasting models to meet growth, launches, and expansion; tie plans to budget cycles and supply constraints.
• Set performance targets (latency, jitter, packet loss, throughput) and optimization strategies; eliminate hotspots via routing policy, peering, placement, and traffic engineering.
• Balance cost, performance, and resiliency trade-offs; implement continuous cost optimization and value tracking for network investments.

Core Responsibilities

• Planning & Execution:
• Provides strategic oversight on the management and execution of large-scale projects or initiatives, monitoring timelines, deliverables, and budgets when applicable to ensure success. Sets strategies for appropriately delegating work, setting priorities, and aligning projects with business needs. Drives the strategic planning process across teams, providing guidance on resources or timelines in anticipation of changes.
• Collaboration & Partnership:
• Sets a strategic direction for collaborating with cross-functional teams to ensure alignment of expectations and strategic objectives. Drives a culture of teamwork, empowering teams to build and maintain partnerships with business leaders, stakeholders, and/or customers to contribute to organizational success. Promotes a culture of transparency and inclusivity where all voices are valued and respected.
• Problem Solving:
• Develops and implements strategies for specialized, advanced problem-solving efforts across the organization, serving as an escalation point for highly complex operational and/or technical issues. Oversees teams leveraging innovative techniques to address significant ambiguous issues, identify root causes, and prevent recurrence, reviewing solutions as needed.
• Continuous Learning:
• Champions continuous learning to maintain cutting-edge skills and influence organizational best practices. Inspires teams to build and maintain expertise in relevant areas by proactively monitoring emerging trends, technologies, and industry standards to help position the organization as an industry leader. Contributes to the organization's strategy for learning and development, influencing leadership to foster learning opportunities for the team.
• Continuous Improvement:
• Drives a culture of continuous improvement that sets a standard for efficient and effective processes, protocols, and workflows across the organization. Oversees work to implement large-scale approaches and methods for continued improvement, ensuring changes align with organizational goals. Sets the strategic direction, prioritizes, and approves the roadmap of improvement initiatives to maximize return on investments.
• Performance and Development:
• Drives and ensures consistent application of performance management strategies, systems, processes, and guidelines across the organization. Creates an organizational culture of career development that encourages proactively identifying and pursuing career development opportunities, and guiding leaders to support their team's growth. Drives consistency in the application of talent development procedures and socializes performance expectations across the organization. Partners with HR and executive leadership to envision and execute a talent management strategy, balancing budget and talent resources.

Minimum Job Qualifications

• Education and/or Experience:
• 12 years of experience in network engineering, electrical engineering, cloud programming, or networking research and development OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Hardware Engineering, or related field AND 8 years of experience in network engineering, electrical engineering, cloud programming, or networking research and development OR Master's Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Hardware Engineering, or related field AND 6 years of experience in network engineering, electrical engineering, cloud programming, or networking research and development OR Doctorate in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Hardware Engineering, or related field AND 4 years of experience in network engineering, electrical engineering, cloud programming, or networking research and development.
• Job Skills:
• Same skills as prior level.
• Preferred Job Qualifications
• Education and/or Experience:
• 13 years of experience in network engineering, electrical engineering, cloud programming, or networking research and development OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Hardware Engineering, or related field AND 9 years of experience in network engineering, electrical engineering, cloud programming, or networking research and development OR Master's Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Hardware Engineering, or related field AND 7 years of experience in network engineering, electrical engineering, cloud programming, or networking research and development OR Doctorate in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Hardware Engineering, or related field AND 5 years of experience in network engineering, electrical engineering, cloud programming, or networking research and development.
• People Leadership / Management Experience:
• 7 years of experience in a leadership role with direct reports.
• Budget Experience:
• 4 years of experience working with operating budgets and/or project financials.
• Network Provider Experience: