Manager

Tata Communications Limited; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 1,500,000 - 2,100,000; Full time

Job summary

Tata Communications Limited seeks a Manager Security, Cryptography & Protocol Engineering who operates at the intersection of network protocols and applied cryptography. This hands-on role focuses on reading RFCs, extending open-source stacks, and wiring IPsec, MACsec, WireGuard, TLS 1.3 and PQC overlays into production with clear ownership.

The role reports to the Network Architecture leadership within Strategy & Innovations and requires 5–9 years experience with about 25% travel.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electronics, Telecommunications, Information Technology or a closely related engineering discipline.
• 4–6 years of hands-on, post-degree experience in network protocol engineering and applied network security/cryptography.
• Production-quality code in C, C++, Rust or Python; experience with CI pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Own security and cryptography depth; primitives and protocols (TLS 1.3, IPsec, MACsec, WireGuard, PQC).
• Experiment with security protocols; build, break, benchmark, tune in lab; publish findings.

Skills

Cryptography

Network protocols

C/C++

Python

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS/EC/IT/Telecom

Tools

OpenSSL

libsodium

liboqs

Job description

Job Description Manager Security, Cryptography & Protocol Engineering

Manager Network Security, Cryptography & Protocol Engineering

5-9 years experience 25% travel

About the role.

We are looking for a Manager who lives at the intersection of network protocols and applied cryptography. This is a

deeply hands-on role you will spend most of your time in the lab and in the code: reading RFCs, extending open-source stacks, wiring

up IPsec, MACsec, WireGuard, TLS 1.3 and PQC overlays, and hardening the security of everything you touch. Not an architect-review

role; a build, break, benchmark and ship role with real ownership of what runs in production. The role sits within Strategy & Innovations

at Tata Communications and reports into the Network Architecture leadership.

Key responsibilities

• Own security and cryptography depth develop and demonstrate a first-principles understanding of the primitives (symmetric ciphers, hashes, KEMs, signatures, PQC) and of the protocols that use them (TLS 1.3, IPsec, MACsec, WireGuard, QKD key delivery).
• Know when to apply which primitive, and why.
• Experiment with security protocols hands-on build, break, benchmark and tune IPsec (IKEv2, ESP), MACsec (802.1AE), WireGuard, TLS variants and PQC overlays in the lab; capture what works, what breaks, and what to change; publish findings back to the team.
• Implement and extend network protocols read IETF / IEEE RFCs end-to-end and turn them into production-quality code in C, C++, Rust or Python. Add features and capabilities to existing protocol implementations (routing daemons, tunnelling stacks, control planes, overlays).
• Improve the software stack profile, patch and harden open-source or in-house network / security stacks (strongSwan, wpa_supplicant, kernel netfilter, libsodium, liboqs, and equivalents). Own the quality bar for the code you ship; contribute upstream where it makes sense.
• Design security into the code, not around it — apply mutual authentication, key rotation, forward secrecy, replay protection and side-channel awareness at the protocol layer. Ensure every feature ships with a defensible security model, not a checklist.
• Ship code fast with AI-assisted development — use prompt engineering, LLM-based coding assistants and code-review agents fluently, so features go from RFC to running code in days rather than weeks — without compromising correctness or test coverage.
• Own delivery end-to-end — take features from RFC to running code on schedule; carry code reviews, testing and CI/CD hygiene as first-class personal responsibilities.

Required qualifications

• Education — Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electronics, Telecommunications, Information Technology or a closely related engineering discipline.
• Experience — 4–6 years of hands-on, post-degree experience in both network protocol engineering and applied network security / cryptography (not one or the other). Real code ownership on at least two production or open-source protocol / crypto stacks.
• Networking protocol depth — solid working understanding of L2/L3 machinery (Ethernet, VLAN, VXLAN, IP/IPv6, TCP, QUIC, BGP, OSPF), tunnelling (GRE, IPsec, WireGuard), and how overlays compose over underlays. Comfortable reading packet captures and reasoning about wire format.
• Security and cryptography depth — practical fluency with TLS 1.3, IPsec (IKEv2, ESP), MACsec (802.1AE), WireGuard; symmetric ciphers (AES-GCM, ChaCha20-Poly1305), hashes (SHA-2/3, BLAKE), KEMs and signatures (ECDH, ECDSA, Ed25519, ML-KEM, ML-DSA); hands-on with OpenSSL, libsodium, liboqs and equivalent crypto libraries; key-management basics (HSM, KMS, PKCS#11).
• Programming proficiency — production-quality code in at least one of C, C++, Rust or Python; comfortable with systems-level code, build systems (make, cargo, cmake), version control (git), unit / integration testing, and CI pipelines.
• RFC literacy — able to read an IETF or IEEE specification end-to-end, identify exactly what needs to be built or changed, and translate it into working code and test cases.
• Cloud networking — at least one of AWS, Azure or GCP at working depth: VPC/VNet design, transit gateway, private link, cloud.
• Delivery discipline — proven track record of shipping design and code projects on schedule; comfortable with structured design reviews, change management, and post-implementation review.

Preferred (nice-to-have) qualifications

• Certifications: CCNP Enterprise / Security or CCIE (Cisco); Fortinet NSE 4–7; Palo Alto PCNSE; AWS Advanced Networking or Security Specialty; CISSP or CCSP; ITIL Foundation; PMP.
• Emerging technology exposure: Post-quantum cryptography (ML-KEM, ML-DSA), quantum-safe key delivery; SASE architectures; container/Kubernetes networking (CNI, service mesh); observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK); automation (Ansible, Terraform, Python).
• Regulated-industry experience: Banking, telecom, healthcare or government network design carrying real compliance obligations.
• Excellent communicator — clear written English (design docs, proposals, customer decks) and confident spoken English (workshops, executive updates); ability to translate deep technical detail into business impact.
• Ownership and on-time delivery — takes personal responsibility for outcomes; a demonstrated passion for closing work on schedule without compromising quality.
• Self-driven learner & AI-native builder — plans and executes own upskilling; keeps pace with a fast-moving technology landscape; fluent in prompt engineering and LLM-based coding assistants to ship features faster and with fewer defects than traditional workflows would allow.
• Structured, collaborative, customer-centric — decomposes ambiguous problems and defends choices with data; works well across pre-sales, engineering, operations and customer teams.