Senior DNS Engineer & SRE—Global Reliability

Optimum; Bethpage (NY); On-site; USD 100,000 - 165,000; Full time

Job summary

Optimum is seeking a Senior DNS Engineer – SRE to own the strategy, global reliability, and evolution of our mission-critical DNS infrastructure powering our ISP and core network services.

You will mentor staff, drive cross-functional initiatives with Product and Security, and shape the engineering culture to maintain sub-millisecond performance for millions of users. Strong SRE, DNS, and automation skills are required.

Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Telecommunications, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience)
• Experience: 5+ years in networking or systems engineering, with at least 3 years focused on SRE principles within a high-scale production environment
• DNS Authority: Expert-level experience configuring and maintaining at least three of the following: BIND, Unbound, PowerDNS, AWS Route 53, or Azure DNS
• Advanced Networking: Expert understanding of TCP/IP, BGP (for Anycast), and encrypted transport protocols (DoH/DoT)
• Software Engineering: High proficiency in Python, Go, or Bash, with a proven track record of building production-grade automation tools
• Observability Stack: Deep experience architecting monitoring solutions with Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry

Responsibilities

• Lead the high-level design and evolution and operation of global, multi-site DNS architectures.
• Implement advanced Anycast routing strategies, multi-provider redundancy, and zero-touch failover mechanisms.
• Act as the primary technical authority in engagements with DNS and infrastructure vendors, driving roadmaps.
• Oversee the full lifecycle of DNS platforms—including automated deployments, hardware refreshes, and capacity planning.
• Define organization-wide standards for DNS record management, security protocols (DNSSEC), and traffic steering policies.
• Define Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and Error Budgets for all core name services.
• Serve as the final escalation point for complex protocol issues involving recursion, iteration, and specific records.
• Architect robust DNSSEC implementations and global DDoS mitigation strategies.
• Lead the development of automation frameworks using Ansible, Terraform, or Kubernetes operators.
• Tune Linux kernel parameters for high throughput and analyze DNS logs/telemetry for issues.
• Design monitoring ecosystems using Prometheus, Grafana, and dnstap.

Skills

DNS Architecture

SRE Principles

Python/Go/Bash

Observability Stack

Anycast Routing

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

BIND

Unbound

PowerDNS

AWS Route 53

Azure DNS

Job description

Optimum is seeking a Senior DNS Engineer – SRE to own the strategy, global reliability, and evolution of our mission-critical DNS infrastructure powering our ISP and core network services.

You will mentor staff, drive cross-functional initiatives with Product and Security, and shape the engineering culture to maintain sub-millisecond performance for millions of users. Strong SRE, DNS, and automation skills are required.