Principal Engineer - Network (Remote)

CrowdStrike Inc.; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Market-leading compensation

Equity awards

Wellness programs

Paid parental leave

Professional development opportunities

Employee networks & volunteer programs

World-class office amenities

Great Place to Work certification

Job summary

CrowdStrike Inc. is seeking a senior network architect to own the IP and optical backbone for our global operations. You will define multi-year roadmaps, traffic engineering, capacity planning, and demand forecasting to scale the network for rapid growth.

You will lead platform selection for routing and optical hardware, collaborate with vendor teams, and drive automation and telemetry strategies. Mentoring engineers and guiding IaC adoption will be core to this role in a 24x7 on-call context.

Qualifications

• 12+ years designing, building, and operating large-scale backbone networks.
• Deep expertise in IP/MPLS core technologies: IS-IS, MP-BGP, SR-MPLS/SRv6, VRFs and MPLS-TE.
• Cloud networking experience across AWS, GCP, OCI, Azure and neoclouds.

Responsibilities

• Own platform selection for routing and optical hardware, coordinating with vendor engineering.
• Influence roadmaps and engage executive stakeholders across datacenter, app and business teams.
• Lead network automation and IaC strategy (Terraform, Ansible, CI/CD, GitOps) and telemetry/analytics initiatives.
• Mentor engineers and set corporate standards; serve as senior escalation resource in 24x7 operations.

Skills

backbone network design

IP/MPLS core

SR-MPLS/SRv6

optical transport

cloud networking

IaC & automation

AI in network ops

FedRAMP environments

vendor management

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science / MIS or related field

Job description

As a global leader in cybersecurity, CrowdStrike protects the people, processes and technologies that drive modern organizations. Since 2011, our mission hasn't changed - we're here to stop breaches, and we've redefined modern security with the world's most advanced AI-native platform. We work on large scale distributed systems, processing almost 3 trillion events per day and this traffic is growing daily. Our customers span all industries, and they count on CrowdStrike to keep their businesses running, their communities safe and their lives moving forward. We're proud to work for a mission-driven company leveraging AI to transform the way we work. CrowdStrikers drive their careers through flexibility and autonomy while also being expected to contribute to a culture of responsible AI adoption, experimentation, and innovation. We use an AI-first mindset as a force multiplier to proactively and continuously accelerate execution, build expertise, uncover insights, and solve complex problems. We're always looking to add talented CrowdStrikers to the team who have limitless passion, a relentless focus on innovation and a fanatical commitment to our customers, our community and each other. Ready to join a mission that matters? The future of cybersecurity starts with you.

About the Role:

You will own the IP and optical architecture for CrowdStrike's global backbone, including connectivity to traditional and neocloud providers. You'll set the multi-year roadmap governing its evolution, including traffic engineering strategy, capacity planning, and demand forecasting for the network as a whole. You'll drive the initiatives that matter most to the business, from funding case through implementation and long-term operational stewardship, and act as the senior escalation resource in the 24x7 on-call rotation when an incident exceeds the depth of the engineers already on it.

What You'll Do:

You'll own platform selection for routing and optical hardware, working directly with vendor engineering teams to influence their roadmaps, and engage director- and VP-level stakeholders across datacenter, application, and business teams to keep network strategy ahead of the company's growth. You'll set the direction for network automation and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Ansible, CI/CD, GitOps), and for telemetry and analytics strategy, increasingly including frontier and open-weight AI models for tasks like telemetry analysis and automated triage, with sensitive backbone data kept in-house. Part of the role is raising the technical bar of the organization: reviewing senior engineers' designs, setting the standards they build against, and mentoring them toward this level.

What You'll Need:

• US Citizenship or Green Card holder status
• 12+ years designing, building, and operating large-scale backbone networks, with ownership of architecture at global scale
• Deep expertise in IP/MPLS core technologies: IS-IS, MP-BGP, segment routing (SR-MPLS/SRv6), PE/P architectures, MPLS-TE, VRFs, DDoS mitigation, CDN
• Deep expertise in optical transport: DWDM, coherent optics (400G/800G), ROADM architectures, amplifier design (EDFA/Raman), dispersion management, alien wavelengths
• Strong grounding in cloud networking: direct connectivity, multi-cloud routing, and hybrid cloud at scale across major hyperscalers (AWS, GCP, OCI, Azure) and neoclouds (e.g., CoreWeave, Cerebras)
• Working depth in adjacent infrastructure domains (virtualization, containers, databases, message queuing, large-scale provisioning) sufficient to architect across boundaries
• Proven abilityto set, notjustexecute, network automation and IaC strategy
• Familiaritywith applying frontier and open-weight AI models to networkoperations (e.g.,telemetryanalysis, automatedtriage, ChatOps tooling),includingself-hostingopen-weight models where data sensitivityrequires it
• Experience operatingorarchitecting networkswithin FedRAMP-authorizedenvironments
• Track recordof selecting, testing, and deploying networkinghardwareand software organization-wide, across majorvendors (Juniper, Infinera, Nokia, Arista, Cisco, etc.)
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Management Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent experience
• Proven experience utilizing AI technologies to enhance decision‑making, streamline workflows and processes, improve efficiency and drive business outcomes.

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Benefits of Working at CrowdStrike:

• Market leader in compensation and equity awards
• Comprehensive physical and mental wellness programs
• Competitive vacation and holidays for recharge
• Paid parental and adoption leaves
• Professional development opportunities for all employees regardless of level or role
• Employee Networks, geographic neighborhood groups, and volunteer opportunities to build connections
• Vibrant office culture with world class amenities
• Great Place to Work Certified across the globe

CrowdStrike is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to fost