Principal Network Engineer

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: