Sr. Manager, Network Engineering

Clearwater Analytics, LLC; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 171,000 - 244,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Vision insurance

Dental insurance

401(k)

PTO

Parental leave

Medical leave

STD/LTD insurance

Job summary

Clearwater Analytics, LLC seeks an experienced infrastructure engineering leader to manage Network and Systems squads, shaping architecture from data center LAN to cloud integration. You will remain hands-on in BGP, MPLS, Linux, and Kubernetes while mentoring teams to deliver reliable, compliant infrastructure.

You’ll drive automation, IaC, and modern CI/CD practices across on-prem and AWS, ensuring carrier-grade reliability for a regulated financial platform.

Qualifications

• 10+ years hands-on experience in network engineering, systems administration, infrastructure operations, or DevOps with at least 5 years in a senior/lead role.
• 3+ years of people management experience in engineering teams at enterprise scale.
• 2+ years in a financial services or FinTech environment with regulated infrastructure familiarity.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and scale both Network Engineering and Systems Engineering squads; set technical direction, hire high performers, and create a culture of operational excellence.
• Own network infrastructure strategy: design scalable data center LAN architectures on Cisco, edge routing on Arista, and edge security on Palo Alto; drive BGP routing strategy for external connectivity.
• Drive MPLS strategy, implementation, and optimization across hybrid on-premises/public-cloud environment; ensure MPLS-based traffic engineering and failover meet carrier-grade reliability.
• Lead data center network operations: manage LAN/WAN/MAN networks, provisioning, reviews and purchasing decisions.
• Own full-stack systems engineering: Linux systems administration, hypervisor/VM operations, Kubernetes cluster strategy and operations, CI/CD pipeline architecture, and IaC.
• Drive observability and reliability: design monitoring, alerting, log aggregation; establish SLIs/SLOs/SLAs aligned with financial platform requirements.
• Architect and operate the platform’s hybrid cloud footprint: manage on-prem, AWS integration, co-location facilities, and seamless connectivity/failover across environments.
• Champion infrastructure automation: advocate Ansible, Terraform, and IaC frameworks; promote configuration management and versioning practices.
• Support financial data connectivity: ensure robust integration patterns for market data feeds, custodian integrations, FIX/SWIFT/SFTP protocols.

Skills

BGP routing

MPLS

Data center design

Linux systems

Kubernetes

Terraform

Ansible

CI/CD

Observability

Security fundamentals

Education

BS in CS/Engineering

Tools

Cisco data center LAN switching

Arista edge routing

Palo Alto firewalls

GitHub Actions / Jenkins / GitLab CI

Job description

Team / Who We Are

We build and operate the infrastructure backbone that powers one of the financial services industry's most demanding SaaS platforms. Our Platform Infrastructure Engineering team manages both the network engineering and systems engineering functions, sitting at the critical intersection of carrier-class networking, data center operations, cloud integration, and financial technology — ensuring that mission‑critical investment accounting, portfolio analytics, and data connectivity services run with carrier‑grade reliability, 24/7, for over a thousand of the largest hedge funds, asset managers, family offices, insurers and corporations. This is a hands‑on manager role where you lead through technical depth and strong network engineering expertise. You'll drive infrastructure strategy, mentor your teams, and spend significant time on the network engineering challenges that define our platform's reliability. Your domain expertise in network architecture, routing protocols, and data center operations is as critical as your leadership capabilities.

What We Need

We’re looking for an experienced engineering leader who brings strong hands‑on network engineering expertise to manage both Network Engineering and Systems Engineering squads. You'll be the strategic lead for our entire infrastructure platform—from edge routing and firewalls through data center LAN design, all the way up through Linux systems, virtualization, container orchestration, and cloud integration. This is not a purely people‑management role. You'll stay deeply involved in architecture decisions, technology evaluations, and hands‑on problem‑solving—especially in network engineering. You need to be credible technically with your teams, capable of diving into BGP routing issues, MPLS configurations, data center network design, and cross‑vendor integrations with the same rigor you apply to team leadership and hiring. You'll work with our software engineering, security, DevOps, data operations, and client connectivity teams to architect and operate a hybrid on‑premises/public‑cloud environment where network reliability is non‑negotiable. You'll be both a technical escalation point for complex infrastructure issues and an organizational leader setting direction and mentoring high‑performing teams.

Primary Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and scale both the Network Engineering and Systems Engineering squads; set technical direction, hire high performers, and create a culture of operational excellence and continuous improvement.
• Own network infrastructure strategy: design and implement scalable data center LAN architectures on Cisco, edge routing on Arista, and edge security on Palo Alto; drive BGP routing strategy for external connectivity with clients, vendors, and partners.
• Drive MPLS strategy, implementation, and optimization across our hybrid on‑premises/public‑cloud environment; ensure MPLS‑based traffic engineering and failover mechanisms meet carrier‑grade reliability standards.
• Lead data center network operations: manage LAN/WAN/MAN networks, oversee connectivity provisioning, handle infrastructure technology reviews and purchasing decisions.
• Own full‑stack systems engineering: Linux systems administration, hypervisor/VM operations, Kubernetes cluster strategy and operations, CI/CD pipeline architecture, and infrastructure‑as‑code frameworks.
• Drive observability and reliability: design monitoring, alerting, and log aggregation strategies; establish SLIs, SLOs, and SLAs aligned with financial platform requirements.
• Architect and operate the platform's hybrid cloud footprint: manage on‑premises infrastructure, AWS integration, co‑location facilities, and ensure seamless connectivity and failover across environments.
• Champion infrastructure automation and tooling: drive adoption of Ansible, Terraform, or equivalent IaC frameworks; evangelize configuration management and infrastructure versioning practices.
• Support financial data connectivity: ensure robust integration patterns for market data feeds, custodian integrations, FIX/SWIFT/SFTP protocols, and third‑party data vendor connectivity.
• Partner with Security and Compliance to ensure infrastructure adherence to SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and applicable financial industry regulatory requirements.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and vendor solutions; make architectural recommendations grounded in operational maturity, business impact, and team capability.
• Lead incident response for platform‑level outages; drive root cause analysis and permanent resolution of systemic reliability issues.

You Are a Great Fit

If you're a hands‑on technical leader with deep expertise in network engineering. You can design a data center network, explain BGP configuration trade‑offs with conviction, and dive into a production incident without needing context from your team. You take ownership, ship complex projects, and document what you learn so others benefit. You're comfortable leading through technical depth and building organizations of strong engineers who respect your capability. You've operated infrastructure at scale—dealing with the unique constraints of regulated environments where uptime commitments, audit trails, and data integrity requirements matter as much as technical elegance. You find that context interesting, not frustrating. You care about the craft: clean automation, thoughtful architecture, solid documentation. You understand that in financial services, the details really do matter, and you lead your teams with that same attention to detail. You move fast, make good decisions with incomplete information, and thrive in a collaborative environment. You read a post‑mortem, implement the fix, and then write the runbook. You mentor engineers both on technical depth and professional growth.

Job Qualifications

To be successful in this role, you should bring the following:

• Required 10+ years of hands‑on experience in network engineering, systems administration, infrastructure operations, or DevOps—with at least 5 years in a senior/lead technical role managing infrastructure at enterprise scale. 3+ years of people management experience, with demonstrated success building and scaling engineering teams. 2+ years in a financial services or FinTech environment; experience with regulated infrastructure is a meaningful advantage.
• Deep, hands‑on network engineering expertise: strong command of BGP, MPLS, OSPF, and other dynamic routing protocols; proven ability to design and operate data center LAN/WAN networks at scale.
• Production‑grade hands‑on experience with Cisco data center LAN switching, Arista edge routing, and Palo Alto firewalls; deep familiarity with CLI conventions and vendor‑specific configurations.
• Strong expertise in MPLS design, implementation, and troubleshooting; experience with MPLS‑based traffic engineering, Fast Reroute (FRR), or segment routing is expected.
• Experience with layer 2 technologies (VPLS, multicast, spanning‑tree, VXLAN, dark fiber terminations); understanding of next‑generation data center network architectures.
• Hands‑on Linux systems administration with RHEL and Debian‑based distributions; strong command‑line proficiency and systems‑level diagnostic ability.
• Production‑grade experience with Kubernetes cluster operations, workload scheduling, resource governance, and service mesh configuration.
• Proven infrastructure automation experience: Ansible, Terraform, Salt, or equivalent IaC tooling—not just scripting, but designing automation frameworks.
• CI/CD platform expertise: GitLab CI, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Spinnaker, or equivalent; solid understanding of software delivery pipeline design.
• Hands‑on observability stack experience: Prometheus, Grafana, Elastic Stack (ELK/EFK), CheckMk, or equivalent enterprise monitoring and log aggregation tooling.
• Strong networking fundamentals: TCP/IP, DNS, TLS/PKI, load balancing, VPN, security architectures—especially as applied to host‑based and data center environments.
• Experience working with Tier 1/Tier 2 global ISPs and configuring BGP routing with external partners and clients.
• Familiarity with financial data connectivity: FIX protocol, SWIFT messaging, SFTP/FTPS file transfer workflows, market data feed management, and custodian integration patterns.
• Experience with SOC 2, PCI‑DSS, or equivalent compliance frameworks; understanding of audit evidence, access control, and change management.
• Solid scripting and automation skills in Python, Bash, Perl, or equivalent; comfort with API‑driven infrastructure management.
• Strong communication skills: ability to explain complex technical trade‑offs to non‑technical stakeholders, lead technical discussions, write clear documentation.
• Preferred Experience with hybrid and public cloud platforms (AWS EC2/EKS/RDS/S3); cost governance and FinOps awareness.
• Familiarity with server virtualization platforms (ProxMox, VMware vSphere, or equivalent).
• Hands‑on experience with extranet providers and services (TNS, MegaPort, ECX).
• Working knowledge of relational database systems (MySQL, PostgreSQL) and time‑series data stores in financial contexts.
• Java application understanding: JVM internals, tuning, GC analysis (given financial platform prevalence of Java services).
• Exposure to financial regulatory environments: SEC, FINRA, MiFID II, or similar.
• Experience with secrets management and certificate lifecycle tooling (HashiCorp Vault, CyberArk, Let’s Encrypt).
• Leadership certifications or training (Certified Scrum Product Owner, leadership coaching, etc.).
• Industry certifications: CCNP, CCIE (highly desired), JNCIP-*, JNCIE-*, RHCA, CKA/CKAD, or equivalent.
• Bachelor of Science (BS) in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field—or equivalent practical experience.

Salary Range $171,000.00 - $244,150.00 This is the pay range the Company believes it will pay for this position at the time of this posting. Consistent with applicable law, compensation will be determined based on relevant experience, other job‑related qualifications/skills, and geographic location (to account for comparative cost of living). The Company reserves the right to modify this pay range at any time.

For this role, benefits include:

• health/vision/dental insurance
• 401(k)
• PTO
• parental leave
• medical leave
• STD/LTD insurance benefits

Clearwater Analytics is An Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status, age or any other federally protected class.

Thank you for your interest in a career with Clearwater!

Clearwater Analytics (NYSE: CWAN) is transforming investment management with the industry’s most comprehensive cloud‑native platform for institutional investors across global public and private markets. While legacy systems create risk, inefficiency, and data fragmentation, Clearwater’s single‑instance, multi‑tenant architecture delivers real‑time data and AI‑driven insights throughout the investment lifecycle. The platform eliminates information silos by integrating portfolio management, trading, investment accounting, reconciliation, regulatory reporting, performance, compliance, and risk analytics in one unified system. Serving leading insurers, asset managers, hedge funds, banks, corporations, and governments, Clearwater supports over $8.8 trillion in assets globally. Learn more at www.clearwateranalytics.com.

Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. We are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with the job description, we encourage you to still apply! You may be just what we're looking for.