Senior Manager, Network Operations Austin, TX

Natera, Inc.; Austin, Northern (TX, KY); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Natera, Inc. is seeking a hands-on Senior Manager of Network Operations to serve as the Austin site lead, directing day-to-day operations, reliability, and continuous improvement of our global enterprise network supporting healthcare and genomic operations.

This role manages a distributed network operations team to ensure high availability across LAN, WAN, wireless, firewalls, VPN, cloud, and on‑prem environments, while partnering with Security, DevOps, and Lab/Business Operations to deliver

Qualifications

• Bachelors degree in technical field or equivalent.
• CCNP or equivalent enterprise networking certification, or hands-on experience.
• Experience leading enterprise network teams and on-call operations.
• Experience in HIPAA-regulated biotech or healthcare environments preferred.
• Strong knowledge of routing/switching, firewalls, VPN, security practices.

Responsibilities

• Oversee stability, performance, security, and availability of global enterprise network.
• Lead a team of network engineers with coaching and prioritization.
• Drive automation, resiliency, lifecycle management, and improvements.
• Act as escalation point for high-severity network incidents; coordinate RCA.
• Maintain hands-on design, configuration, and optimization when needed.
• Partner with security on firewall policy, segmentation, and secure architecture.
• Support capacity planning, lifecycle refreshes, and vendor management.

Skills

Network operations

Team leadership

Incident response

Observability tooling

Change management

Cloud networking

Education

Bachelor's degree in technical field

Tools

SolarWinds

LogicMonitor

Wireshark

NetFlow

SNMP

Juniper

Palo Alto Networks

Opengear

AWS

Job description

Natera is seeking a hands‑on, highly accountable Senior Manager of Network Operations to be our Austin site lead. This position will lead the day‑to‑day operations, reliability, and continuous improvement of a global enterprise network supporting critical healthcare and genomic operations.

This role is responsible for managing a distributed network operations team, ensuring high availability across LAN, WAN, wireless, firewall, cloud, and on‑premise environments. The Senior Manager will partner closely with Infrastructure, Information Security, DevOps, Engineering, and Lab/Business Operations teams to support a secure, scalable, and resilient network environment.

The ideal candidate brings strong technical depth, operational discipline, and people leadership experience. This individual will help execute network modernization initiatives, improve observability and incident response, maintain compliance with change management and regulatory controls, and ensure the network team delivers consistent, reliable support to the business.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage the stability, performance, security, and availability of Natera’s global enterprise network, including LAN, WAN, SD‑WAN, wireless, firewalls, VPN, cloud, and on‑premise environments.
• Lead a team of network engineers, providing coaching, prioritization, and technical guidance.
• Execute network operations initiatives aligned with the broader IT infrastructure strategy, including automation, resiliency, lifecycle management, and performance improvements.
• Serve as an escalation point for high‑severity network incidents, coordinating troubleshooting, communication, root cause analysis, and service restoration.
• Remain hands‑on with network design, configuration, troubleshooting, optimization, and implementation activities as needed.
• Partner with Information Security on firewall policy management, segmentation, remote access, vulnerability remediation, and secure network architecture practices.
• Support network capacity planning, hardware/software lifecycle refreshes, redundancy improvements, and operational risk reduction efforts.
• Improve monitoring, alerting, and observability practices using tools such as SolarWinds, LogicMonitor, Wireshark, NetFlow, SNMP, and related platforms.
• Ensure network changes follow established change management, documentation, compliance, and operational governance processes.
• Maintain and improve operational KPIs such as uptime, incident volume, MTTR, change success rate, alert quality, and recurring issue reduction.
• Support vendor management activities, including technical reviews, support escalations, renewals, and service performance discussions.
• Collaborate with cross‑functional teams to support business growth, new site deployments, cloud connectivity, application performance, and infrastructure modernization efforts.

Technical Skill Requirements

Strong hands‑on experience with:

• Enterprise network operations, troubleshooting, implementation, and support across hybrid cloud and on‑premise environments.
• Routing and switching technologies, including BGP, OSPF, EIGRP, VLANs, VRFs, STP, Layer 2/Layer 3 design, and high‑availability network topologies.
• Next‑generation firewalls, preferably Palo Alto Networks.
• Wireless networking, preferably Cisco Meraki.
• VPN technologies, IPSec, GRE, NAT, QoS, load balancing, and secure remote access solutions.
• Monitoring and diagnostic tools such as SolarWinds, LogicMonitor, Wireshark, NetFlow, SNMP, and related observability platforms.
• Network platforms including Juniper, Palo Alto Networks, Cisco Meraki, and Opengear.
• Cloud networking concepts, preferably within AWS environments.
• Network documentation, standards, change control, incident management, and operational runbooks.

Certifications

Required:

• Bachelors degree in Technical Field or Equivalent
• CCNP or equivalent enterprise networking certification, or comparable hands‑on experience.

Strongly Preferred:

• Juniper JNCIP or JNCIE.
• AWS Certified Advanced Networking Specialty.
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional.
• ITIL Foundation v3/v4.
• Experience working in a HIPAA‑regulated biotech, pharma, healthcare, or life sciences enterprise.

Leadership Experience

• 5+ years of experience in enterprise network engineering, network operations, or infrastructure operations.
• 5+ years of experience leading or managing technical network teams.
• Experience managing on‑call rotations, escalation processes, incident response workflows, and operational support models.
• Demonstrated ability to coach engineers, set priorities, improve team execution, and maintain accountability.
• Ability to balance hands‑on technical work with team leadership, operational planning, and cross‑functional coordination.
• Experience supporting high‑availability environments where uptime, security, and compliance are critical.

Expected Outcomes: First 6–12 Months

• Improve network operational stability by identifying recurring issues and driving corrective actions.
• Strengthen incident response, escalation paths, documentation, and root cause analysis practices.
• Improve monitoring, alert quality, and visibility into network health and performance.
• Support execution of the network modernization roadmap in partnership with the Director of IT Infrastructure and architecture stakeholders.
• Establish or refine operational metrics for uptime, MTTR, change success rate, incident trends, and recurring issue reduction.
• Improve team structure, prioritization, accountability, and day‑to‑day execution.

Reporting & Stakeholder Alignment

• Reports to the Director of IT Infrastructure.
• Works closely with Information Security, DevOps, Engineering, Application Delivery, Facilities, and Business Operations teams.
• Provides regular updates to IT leadership on network health, incidents, risks, project status, and operational performance.
• Supports business and technology stakeholders by ensuring reliable, secure, and scalable network services.

OUR OPPORTUNITY

Natera™ is a global leader in cell‑free DNA (cfDNA) testing, dedicated to oncology, women’s health, and organ health. Our aim is to make personalized genetic testing and diagnostics part of the standard of care to protect health and enable earlier and more targeted interventions that lead to longer, healthier lives.

The Natera team consists of highly dedicated statisticians, geneticists, doctors, laboratory scientists, business professionals, software engineers and many other professionals from world‑class institutions, who care deeply for our work and each other. When you join Natera, you’ll work hard and grow quickly. Working alongside the elite of the industry, you’ll be stretched and challenged, and take pride in being part of a company that is changing the landscape of genetic disease management.

WHAT WE OFFER

• Competitive Benefits - Employee benefits include comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life and disability plans for eligible employees and their dependents.
• Additionally, Natera employees and their immediate families receive free testing in addition to fertility care benefits.
• Other benefits include pregnancy and baby bonding leave, 401k benefits, commuter benefits and much more.
• We also offer a generous employee referral program!

Natera is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to ensuring a diverse and inclusive workplace environment, and welcome people of different backgrounds, experiences, abilities and perspectives. Inclusive collaboration benefits our employees, our community and our patients, and is critical to our mission of changing the management of disease worldwide.

All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply, and will be considered without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, age, veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with applicable laws.

If you are based in California, we encourage you to read this important information for California residents.

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey.Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiringprocess or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in aconfidential file.

As set forth in Natera’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy,we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection.As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measurethe effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categoriesis as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service‑connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three‑year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.