Staff Network Reliability Engineer (f/m/d)

1&1 IONOS SE; Karlsruhe; Hybrid; EUR 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work

Flexible hours

Canteen subsidy

Good transport links

Job summary

1&1 IONOS SE in Karlsruhe seeks a senior/staff-level engineer to run large production networks across data centers, defining health metrics and leading incidents with a reliability mindset.

The role focuses on applying AI to operations, automating toil with Python/Ansible, and collaborating with NRE teams on observability, lifecycle, and capacity planning in a hybrid work environment.

Qualifications

• 5+ years operating large-scale production data center networks.
• Deep Layer 2/3 knowledge: routing (BGP, OSPF) and VXLAN with BGP/EVPN.
• Multi-vendor ops across Juniper and Cisco; SONiC and NetBox familiarity is a plus.
• Strong Linux fundamentals and the corresponding toolkit (bash, tcpdump, iptables, git).
• Network automation with Python and Ansible; CI/CD on GitLab.
• Reliability mindset: SLOs, observability, postmortems, toil reduction.
• Fluent use of AI in daily engineering; English fluency; German a plus.

Responsibilities

• Own reliability of the physical fabric, SDN overlay, and virtual network functions across all IONOS data centers.
• Lead incident response on major network incidents and drive postmortems for lasting fixes.
• Remove toil through automation with pipelines and tooling for lifecycle, patching, and config management.
• Apply AI to operations: anomaly detection, automated diagnosis, and automated remediation with prudent judgment.
• Strengthen observability and contribute to capacity planning and change management.
• Collaborate with NRE Provisioning on clean handovers.
• Share the on-call rotation for the described responsibilities.

Skills

BGP/OSPF

VXLAN/BGP-EVPN

Linux basics

Python + Ansible

GitLab CI/CD

SRE mindset

AI for network ops

English fluency

Tools

SONiC

NetBox

Job description

Tasks

NRE Operations runs the data center networks for the entire IONOS group: the physical fabric and underlay, the SDN overlay, and the virtual network functions on top, across dozens of data centers. We are looking for a senior or staff-level engineer who operates large production networks with a reliability mindset. You define what \"healthy\" means, catch problems before customers do, lead the hardest incidents, and partner with NRE Automation to push routine operations toward zero manual steps. AI is central to how we work, both to make the network smarter and to make each engineer faster.

We expect every engineer here to be fluent with AI, and we mean it in two concrete ways. First, applying AI to the network itself: anomaly detection, automated diagnosis and root-cause analysis, config generation and validation, smarter alerting, and runbook or agent-driven automation. Second, using AI to raise your own output: coding assistants and LLM tooling for scripting, troubleshooting, research, and documentation. Reliability work punishes blind trust, so the skill that matters most is judgment. You need to know when an AI-generated config or diagnosis is trustworthy and when it is not.

Tasks

• Own reliability of the physical fabric, SDN overlay, and virtual network functions across all IONOS data centers. Set service level objectives and drive down unplanned downtime.
• Lead incident response on major network incidents and run postmortems that produce lasting fixes.
• Remove toil through automation, working with NRE Automation on pipelines and tooling for lifecycle, patching, and service configuration.
• Apply AI to operations: anomaly detection, automated diagnosis, config generation and validation, and automated remediation, with the judgment to know when AI output is trustworthy.
• Strengthen observability so problems surface before they reach customers, and shape lifecycle, upgrade, change-management, and capacity practices.
• Collaborate with NRE Provisioning on clean handovers.
• Share the on-call rotation covering the above.

Qualifications

• Extensive hands-on experience operating large-scale production data center networks (5+ years for Senior, longer for Staff).
• Deep Layer 2 and Layer 3 knowledge: routing (BGP, OSPF) and VXLAN with BGP/EVPN.
• Multi-vendor operations across Juniper and Cisco; SONiC and Netbox familiarity is a plus.
• Strong Linux fundamentals and the toolkit that goes with them (bash, tcpdump, iptables, git).
• Network automation you have built, using Python with Ansible and CI/CD on GitLab.
• A reliability-engineering mindset: SLOs, observability, incident command, postmortems, designing out toil.
• Fluent, critical use of AI in daily engineering, plus a track record or credible ideas for applying AI to network operations.
• Fluent English for international teams; German is a plus. Ownership and a calm approach when things break.

Benefits

• Hybrid working model.
• Flexible working hours through trust-based working hours.
• At some locations a subsidized canteen and various free drinks.
• Modern office space with very good transport connections.
• Various employee discounts for activities and products.
• Employee events such as summer and winter parties, as well as workshops.
• Numerous training and development opportunities.
• Various health offers, such as sports and health courses.