Principal Engineer

Responsibilities

Interconnection Strategy

• Develop and execute the global peering and interconnection strategy
• Identify opportunities to expand peering relationships and optimize transit utilization
• Drive network growth through strategic partnerships with ISPs, cloud providers, content networks, CDNs, carriers, and hyperscalers
• Evaluate new IX opportunities and regional expansion initiatives
• Establish KPIs for traffic offload, cost reduction, latency improvements, and resiliency
• Peering Management
• Private Peering
• Maintain peering policies and qualification requirements
• Coordinate onboarding and operational support for new peers
• Resolve peering disputes, routing issues, and traffic imbalances
• Internet Exchange (IX) Operations
• Cross-connects
• Port upgrades
• New exchange deployments
• Develop business cases for new IX expansion
• Maintain relationships with IX operators and executive leadership
• IP Transit Management
• Manage global transit providers and carrier relationships
• Conduct transit capacity planning
• Negotiate contracts and pricing
• Evaluate transit performance and redundancy requirements
• Develop strategies to reduce transit costs through increased peering
• Monitor traffic shifts between transit and peering environments
• Routing & Traffic Engineering
• Define and maintain routing policies
• Participate in policy discussions and industry working groups
• Traffic Analytics Platforms
• Azure ExpressRoute
• Executive reporting and forecasting

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Telecommunications, or related field
• 15+ years related engineering experience

Negotiate and manage

• Settlement-Free Peering
• Bilateral Peering
• Multilateral Peering
• Public Peering

Manage relationships through

• PeeringDB
• IX communities
• Industry forums
• Network operator groups
• Manage participation across global Internet Exchanges
• Evaluate IX performance and ROI

Optimize traffic flows across

• Peering
• Transit
• IX fabrics
• Private interconnections

Manage traffic engineering initiatives using

• BGP communities
• Local Preference

MED

• AS Path Prepending
• Analyze traffic patterns and forecast growth
• Improve latency, packet loss, and path optimization
• Industry Engagement

APNIC

Global Peering Forum

Build executive-level relationships across the Internet ecosystem

• Monitor industry trends affecting interconnection and Internet governance
• Cross-Functional Leaderships

Partner with

• Network Engineering
• Infrastructure Operations
• Security
• Product Management
• Legal
• Procurement
• Finance

Develop executive reporting and dashboards

Present interconnection strategy and performance metrics to senior leadership

Required Technical Expertise

• Routing Protocols
• BGP-4 (Border Gateway Protocol) eBGP iBGP
• Route Reflectors
• Confederations
• BGP Communities
• Large Communities
• Flowspec
• Core Internet Protocols
• IPv4
• IPv6

MPLS

Routing Technologies

IS-IS

Segment Routing

VXLAN

• Internet Infrastructure
• Internet Exchanges (IX)
• Route Servers
• Route Collectors
• CDN Architectures
• Anycast
• DNS Infrastructure
• DDoS Mitigation Architectures
• Content Delivery Networks
• Routing Security

RPKI

ROA Validation

ASPA

BGPsec

MANRS

• IRR Databases
• Route Filtering
• Prefix Filtering
• Monitoring & Analytics
• NetFlow sFlow

SNMP

• Telemetry
• Capacity Planning Tools
• Cloud & Interconnection Platforms
• AWS Direct Connect
• Google Cloud Interconnect
• Oracle FastConnect
• Equinix Fabric
• Megaport
• Business & Commercial Responsibilities
• Peering negotiations
• Transit contract negotiations
• Capacity planning and budgeting
• Vendor management
• Cost optimization initiatives
• SLA management
• Risk assessment and mitigation

Requirements

7+ years of Internet networking experience

5+ years of peering, transit, or interconnection experience

• Experience managing relationships with ISPs, carriers, cloud providers, and IX operators
• Proven experience negotiating peering and transit agreements
• Experience operating large-scale global networks
• Preferred Certifications
• CCNP Service Provider
• CCIE Service Provider

JNCIE-SP

• AWS Advanced Networking Specialty
• MANRS Certification Knowledge

RPKI Deployment Experience

This position is based in our Reston, VA office and offers a hybrid work schedule.

The pay range is $180,700 - $244,500.

The anticipated annual base salary range for this position is noted above, however, base pay offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, experience. Verisign offers a discretionary bonus which is based on individual and company performance, and certain roles may be eligible for discretionary stock awards.

Verisign is an equal opportunity employer. That means we recruit, hire, compensate, train, promote, transfer, and administer all terms and conditions of employment without regard to their race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, protected veteran status, disability, or other protected categories under applicable law.

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