Staff Network Reliability Engineer (f/m/d) (Karlsruhe)

Webhosting; Karlsruhe; Hybrid; EUR 90,000 - 125,000; Full time

Job summary

IONOS in Karlsruhe is seeking a Staff Network Reliability Engineer to own the reliability of data center networks, the SDN overlay, and virtual network functions across multiple data centers. You will define SLAs and drive down unplanned downtime.

You’ll lead incident responses, work with NRE Automation to reduce toil, and apply AI to detection, diagnosis, and remediation while maintaining sound judgment about AI outputs.

Qualifications

• Senior network engineer with experience managing large production networks.
• Strong incident response and postmortem skills.
• Experience applying AI to network operations and automation.

Responsibilities

• Own reliability of the physical fabric, SDN overlay, and virtual network functions; set SLOs and drive down downtime.
• Lead incident response on major network incidents and run postmortems.
• Remove toil through automation with pipelines and tooling for lifecycle, patching, and service configuration.
• Apply AI to operations: anomaly detection, automated diagnosis, config generation and validation, remediation.
• Strengthen observability and shape lifecycle, upgrades, change-management, and capacity practices.
• Collaborate with NRE Provisioning on clean handovers.
• Share the on-call rotation covering the above.

Skills

Network reliability

AI in networking

Incident response

Python scripting

Tools

SDN controllers

Job description

Staff Network Reliability Engineer (f/m/d) (Karlsruhe)

Hybrid Full-time Senior Infrastructure

Job Description

At IONOS, the leading European provider of cloud infrastructure, cloud services and hosting services, you will work together with a wide range of teams. We are characterized by open structures, a friendly working culture and flat hierarchies with a strong team spirit. We firmly believe that work and fun are compatible, and offer you the right environment for this. Our constant growth means that we are always looking for new colleagues. Become part of IONOS and grow with us.

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 reliabilityof 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 responseon 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 observabilityso problems surface before they reach customers, and shape lifecycle, upgrade, change-management, and capacity practices.
• Collaboratewith NRE Provisioning on clean handovers.
• Share the on-call rotationcovering the above.

About IONOS

IONOS is the leading European digitalization partner for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB). The company serves around six million customers and operates across 18 markets in Europe and North America, with its services being accessible worldwide. With its Web Presence & Productivity portfolio, IONOS acts as a ‘one-stop shop’ for all digitalization needs: from domains and web hosting to classic website builders and do-it-yourself solutions, from e-commerce to online marketing tools. In addition, the company offers Cloud Solutions to enterprises who are looking to move to the cloud as their businesses evolve.

We value diversity and welcome all applications – regardless of, for example, gender, nationality, ethnic or social origin, religion, disability, age as well as sexual orientation and identity, physical characteristics, marital status or any other irrelevant factor subject to applicable law.