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Principal Cloud Network Engineer

Microsoft· Cloud Network Engineering
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Redmond, WA$142.8k - $274.8kfull-timePosted 4d ago

About the role

Azure Global Networking designs, builds and operates the optical, wide-area and edge networks that connect every Azure region to each other and to the world. This role leads significant parts of the next-generation network architecture, hardware disaggregation, automation and robotics for production-scale deployment across optical, packet and control layers.

Responsibilities

  • Next Generation Network Design: Own significant parts of the multi-year architecture for Azure's global network across the optical, packet and control layers. Design so that capacity, topology and protection can each evolve independently, and so that no single change or failure can reach the entire backbone.
  • Hardware Disaggregation: Help move the network from vendor-integrated systems to open, interchangeable building blocks: merchant silicon, open network operating systems such as SONiC, open optical line systems, and pluggable and co-packaged optics. Define requirements, evaluate platforms, and work with silicon vendors, ODMs and optical suppliers to shape their roadmaps years ahead of availability.
  • Programmable Optical Layer: Drive how optical circuit switching, optical protection switching, coherent transport and hollow core fiber become active parts of the network design. Define the interfaces, telemetry and control models that let software see, reason about and act on the physical layer.
  • Physical Automation and Robotics: Find where automation and robotics can make the physical network faster, safer and more consistent to build and repair: inspection, installation quality, fiber and connector handling, hardware qualification, and repetitive lab and technician work. Run focused pilots with clear quality, safety and cost goals, and turn the ones that work into how we build.
  • Simulation and Safe Change: Prove designs before anything physical moves. Use and extend network simulation, digital twins and lab automation so that architectures, capacity plans and changes are validated before they reach production. Help define which physical actions can be automated, which require human approval, and which should always stay human.
  • AI-Driven Engineering: Apply AI and agents to our own engineering, across design, qualification, deployment and operations, so that engineers spend their time on architecture rather than on process.
  • Concept to Production: Take ideas from paper to lab to pilot to fleet. Write the design, build or direct the prototype, define the qualification, and stay with it through deployment at global scale.
  • Technical Leadership and Influence: Lead across Azure engineering, hardware, supply chain, datacenter operations, Microsoft Research and external partners without relying on reporting lines. Mentor engineers, raise the technical bar, and communicate trade-offs clearly to engineers, vendors and senior leaders.

Qualifications

  • Doctorate Degree in Electrical Engineering, Optical Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 3+ years technical experience in network design, development, and automation
  • OR Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Optical Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 4+ years technical experience in network design, development, and automation
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Optical Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field AND 6+ years technical experience in network design, development, and automation
  • OR equivalent experience.

Skills

Required:Network designHardware disaggregationOptical networking and photonics
Nice to have:Automation and robotics in hardware operationsProgramming
Last updated Oct 23, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

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