Principal Network Engineer

Advance Auto Parts, Inc.

$120K — $145K *
Information Technology
11 - 15 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience.
  • 12+ years of enterprise network engineering experience with progressive technical leadership.
  • Extensive experience designing and supporting large-scale SD-WAN, WAN, LAN, and hybrid environments.
  • Deep experience with enterprise network security architectures and modernization programs.
  • Expert-level knowledge of TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, OSPF, BGP, and VPN technologies.

Responsibilities

  • Provide data to drive networking strategy and roadmaps across various environments.
  • Lead design and engineering of scalable and secure networking solutions.
  • Provide technical leadership across multiple networking technologies.
  • Serve as the escalation point for complex technical issues and incidents.
  • Lead cross-functional technology reviews and modernization initiatives.
  • Mentor engineers and establish best engineering practices.
  • Partner with vendors to evaluate solutions and optimize investments.

Benefits

  • Comprehensive health and wellness benefits for team members and their families.
  • Support for employees' work-life balance through a hybrid work schedule.
Full Job Description
Job Description

The Principal Network Engineer serves as the organization's highest-level technical authority for enterprise networking, connectivity, automation, and infrastructure engineering. This roleis responsible forinput tonetwork strategy, standards, technology roadmaps, and engineering governance across retail, distribution, corporate, cloud, and remote-access environments. The Principal Network Engineer partners closely with Architecture, Security, Cloud, Infrastructure, Operations, and business leaders to deliver secure, scalable, resilient, and future-ready network services that support enterprise growth and digital transformation initiatives.

Location & Work Availability:

This position isHybrid (4days in office,1day remote),based at our corporate headquarters inRaleigh, North Carolina.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Provide data to driveenterprise networking strategy, standards, and roadmaps across retail, distribution center, campus, data center, cloud, and hybrid environments.

  • Lead the design and engineering of highly scalable, resilient, and secure networking solutions aligned with long-term businessobjectivesand enterprise architecture principles.

  • Provide technical leadership and governance across routing, switching, wireless, SD-WAN, internet, cloud connectivity, and emerging networking technologies.

  • Serve as the highest level of escalation for complex technical issues, major incidents, problem management activities, and root cause analysis efforts.

  • Lead cross-functionaltechnologyreviews, evaluations, and modernization initiatives while influencing enterprise-wide technical decisions.

  • Mentor engineers,establishengineering best practices, and drive continuous improvement across thenetworkengineeringorganization.

  • Partner with vendors and strategic technology providers to evaluate solutions, influence product direction, andoptimizeplatform investments.

Automation, Infrastructure as Code & Reliability Engineering

  • Define and lead Infrastructure as Code (IaC) strategyutilizingTerraform, Ansible, Python, APIs, and cloud-native automation frameworks.

  • Leadand govern CI/CD pipelines and platform engineering capabilities supporting network and infrastructure deployment automation.

  • EstablishGitOpsstandards, source control governance, automated testing frameworks, and deployment validation methodologies.

  • Drive enterprise-scale automation initiatives focused on provisioning, configuration management, lifecycle management, compliance, remediation, and operational efficiency.

  • Champion observability, telemetry, analytics, AIOps, and predictive monitoring capabilities.

  • Lead adoption of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices, resiliency frameworks, and service-levelobjectives.

Qualifications:

  • Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience.

  • 12+ years of enterprise network engineering experience with progressively increasing technical leadership responsibilities.

  • Extensive experience designing and supporting large-scaleSD-WAN,WAN,LAN, wireless, data center, cloud, and hybrid networking environments.

  • Deep experience with enterprise network security architectures and modernization programs.

Technical Expertise

  • Expert-level knowledge of TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, NTP, OSPF, BGP, VPN, and enterprise routing and switching technologies.

  • Advancedexpertisein campus, data center, cloud, WAN, SD-WAN, wireless, and hybrid networking architectures.

  • Deep understanding of multi-cloud networking architectures and cloud-native connectivity solutions.

  • CCIE, CCDE, Azure Network Engineer Expert, AWS Advanced Networking Specialty, or equivalent expert-level certifications.

  • Extensive experience implementing Terraform, Ansible, Python, and large-scale network automation solutions.

Success Measures

  • Enterprise network availability, resiliency, and operational excellence.

  • Successful execution of strategic modernization and transformation initiatives.

  • Reduction of operational risk, technical debt, and recurring incidents.

Benefits Summary:

We believe in supporting our Team Members and those they love through comprehensive health & wellness benefits. Learn more here:

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