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
In this role, you'll own and contribute to the following
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, and 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.
