Senior Network Engineer

Akkar; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 83,000 - 152,000; Full time

Job summary

Akkar is building a Production Engineering team in Austin. You will own the network architecture behind robotic deployments, designing a standard kit to ship with every install and coordinating with customer IT and security teams.

You'll work with architects, integration engineers, and SREs to ensure repeatable, scalable networking across diverse plants. Expect hands-on routing, switching, VPNs, and edge Kubernetes, with travel during early deployments.

Qualifications

• Deep hands-on networking across routing, switching, VLANs, firewalls, VPNs.
• Experience designing networks for sites you don’t fully control and making them work.
• WiFi in harsh environments and cellular failover (5G/LTE).
• Automation using Ansible, Terraform, or similar; strong Linux networking.
• Fleet or multi-site monitoring with Prometheus, Grafana, SNMP, or equivalent.
• Ability to work with customer IT teams and earn their trust.

Responsibilities

• Own full network architecture for deployed robot fleets from subnet to cloud.
• Create a standard, versioned deployment network kit shipped with every install.
• Lead technical talks with customer IT and security; push back where needed and keep designs consistent across plants.
• Monitor fleet health with observability to catch issues before customers call.
• Move fleet services from cloud to on-site infrastructure, including edge Kubernetes.
• Network config as code (Ansible, Terraform) for repeatable site deployments.
• Turn one-off site builds into repeatable, scalable products.
• Some travel to customer sites during early deployments.

Skills

Hands-on networking

Site networking design

WiFi & cellular failover

Automation: Ansible/Terraform

Linux networking

Fleet monitoring

Customer IT engagement

Education

CCNP/CCIE

Tools

Ansible

Terraform

Prometheus

Grafana

SNMP

Kubernetes

Job description

This is a new role on a newly formed Production Engineering team at a well-funded, fast-growing robotics company in Austin. Its robots are already working at Fortune 500 customer sites, and the next major deployment lands in Q1 2027. You'll own the network architecture behind it.

About the Role

Every robot this team ships into a customer site depends on a network that holds up. Right now that network gets rebuilt by hand at every deployment. They want someone to design it properly once, so it ships with the product.

You'll sit alongside architects, integration engineers and SREs. None of them are networking specialists. You'll be the person they rely on for networking.

Responsibilities

• The full network architecture for deployed robot fleets, from each robot's own subnet through the site network, WAN uplinks and on-prem compute, all the way to the cloud.
• A standard, versioned deployment network kit: routers, switching, firewalls and failover. It ships with every install instead of being improvised per site.
• The technical conversation with customer IT and security teams: what you'll push back on, what you'll adapt to, and how you keep the design consistent across very different plants.
• Monitoring and observability across the fleet, so problems are caught before a customer calls.
• The move of fleet services from the cloud onto on-site infrastructure, including Kubernetes on edge hardware.
• Network config as code (Ansible, Terraform), so every site is repeatable.
• Experience turning one-off site builds into a repeatable product.
• Some travel to customer sites during early deployments.

Qualifications

• CCNP/CCIE.

Required Skills

• Deep hands-on networking: routing, switching, VLANs, segmentation, firewalls, VPNs, DHCP/DNS.
• Networks you designed that ran at sites you didn't fully control, and you've had to make them work anyway.
• WiFi in harsh environments, and cellular (5G/LTE) failover, including where each one breaks.
• Automation with Ansible, Terraform or similar, plus strong Linux networking.
• Fleet or multi-site monitoring with Prometheus/Grafana, SNMP or equivalent.
• The ability to hold your ground with customer IT teams, and to earn their trust.

Preferred Skills

• Robotics, AMR/AGV, autonomous vehicle or other device-fleet deployments.
• MikroTik or Cradlepoint.
• Kubernetes or container networking.
• Experience turning one-off site builds into a repeatable product.

The background matters less than the evidence. This role could suit someone from enterprise networking who wants real ownership, or someone from robotics or autonomy deployments who wants to be the architect rather than the fixer.

Details

• 6month contract to start. Contractors on this team have a strong track record of converting to full-time, though it isn't guaranteed.
• Hybrid in Austin, TX: 3/4 days on site.
• Start: ASAP