Lead Network Architect

Accion Labs; Montreal (administrative region); On-site; CAD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Accion Labs is seeking a Senior Network Architect to own target-state network design and act as the design authority for a distributed engineering team. This advisory role will coordinate with engineers performing network build, cutovers, and migrations in a hybrid cloud context.

The candidate will lead design reviews, develop both high‑level and low‑level designs, and ensure security controls align with client requirements. Strong escalation and documentation skills are essential in this role.

Qualifications

• Eleven or more years of enterprise network engineering experience, including at least four years in an architecture or lead capacity.
• Deep expertise in enterprise routing and switching (BGP, OSPF, VLANs, VRFs, spanning tree) across major vendor platforms.
• Strong firewall design experience, including policy design, rule migration approach and rule base rationalisation.
• Demonstrated experience designing and overseeing network migrations and cutovers in production data centre environments.
• Experience with load balancing technologies and network services in a data centre context.
• Proven ability to act as technical escalation point and design authority for a distributed engineering team.
• Hands‑on familiarity with Azure or AWS networking and cloud connectivity concepts.

Responsibilities

• Design target-state network architecture, including routing, switching, segmentation, firewall policy and connectivity topologies.
• Produce network design documentation, including high‑level and low‑level designs, IP addressing schemes and traffic flow diagrams.
• Provide technical guidance and escalation support to technical SMEs and engineers executing network build, configuration and cutover activities.
• Act as design authority for the network domain, reviewing and approving configurations and migration approaches prior to execution.
• Resolve complex technical issues escalated during migration testing and cutover, providing direction to the executing resources.
• Design hybrid connectivity approaches between on‑premises environments and cloud platforms.
• Define network security control requirements with client security teams and validate that designs meet them.
• Review and approve as‑built documentation and migration runbooks produced by executing resources for handover.

Skills

Network architecture

Leadership

Technical escalation

Cloud connectivity

Tools

Ansible

Terraform

Job description

Experience: 11+ years, incl. 4+ in architecture / lead.

CANDIDATE PROFILE

A senior network architect who owns target-state design and acts as design authority and technical escalation point for the engineers doing the hands‑on work. This is a design and advisory role – not a hands‑on configuration or cutover role.

KEY TECHNOLOGIES & SKILLS

• Hybrid cloud connectivity (Azure / AWS)
• Load balancing & DC network services

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Design target-state network architecture, including routing, switching, segmentation, firewall policy and connectivity topologies.
• Produce network design documentation, including high‑level and low‑level designs, IP addressing schemes and traffic flow diagrams.
• Provide technical guidance and escalation support to technical SMEs and engineers executing network build, configuration and cutover activities.
• Act as design authority for the network domain, reviewing and approving configurations and migration approaches prior to execution.
• Resolve complex technical issues escalated during migration testing and cutover, providing direction to the executing resources.
• Design hybrid connectivity approaches between on‑premises environments and cloud platforms.
• Define network security control requirements with client security teams and validate that designs meet them.
• Review and approve as‑built documentation and migration runbooks produced by executing resources for handover.

REQUIRED EXPERIENCE

• Eleven or more years of enterprise network engineering experience, including at least four years in an architecture or lead engineering capacity.
• Deep expertise in enterprise routing and switching (BGP, OSPF, VLANs, VRFs, spanning tree) across major vendor platforms, sufficient to direct and validate the work of executing engineers.
• Strong firewall design experience, including policy design, rule migration approach and rule base rationalisation.
• Demonstrated experience designing and overseeing network migrations and cutovers in production data centre environments.
• Experience with load balancing technologies and network services in a data centre context.
• Proven ability to act as technical escalation point and design authority for a distributed engineering team.
• Ability to produce production‑grade design documentation to enterprise standards.

NICE TO HAVE

• Hands‑on experience with Azure or AWS networking (VNets, VPCs, ExpressRoute, Direct Connect, transit architectures).
• Familiarity with network automation approaches using Ansible, Python or Terraform.
• SD‑WAN or software‑defined data centre networking experience.

IDEAL BACKGROUND

Designing and overseeing network migrations and cutovers in production data centre environments, acting as design authority and escalation point for a distributed engineering team.

LANGUAGE

• English required (written and spoken). French is an asset.