Principal Network Engineer

UK Remote | Permanent | Must Have Permanent Right to Work in the UK

Are you a networking expert who thrives on solving complex infrastructure challenges through automation, innovation, and technical leadership?

We are partnering with an organisation undergoing significant technology transformation and are seeking a Principal Network Engineer to help shape and evolve a modern, highly automated networking estate. This is an opportunity to influence strategy, architecture, and engineering standards while remaining hands-on with cutting-edge technologies across cloud and hybrid environments.

The Role

As a senior technical leader, you will play a pivotal role in designing, building, and evolving highly resilient network platforms that support large-scale business operations. You'll work closely with Platform Engineering, Cloud, Reliability, Security, and Software Engineering teams to drive automation, scalability, and operational excellence.

This is far more than a traditional networking role. You'll be helping drive Infrastructure as Code adoption, self-service capabilities, observability, AI-assisted engineering, and next-generation platform engineering practices.

The role

• Defining network architecture, standards, and engineering best practices
• Designing and implementing scalable hybrid-cloud networking solutions
• Building automated infrastructure using Terraform, Ansible, APIs, and Infrastructure as Code
• Developing self-service capabilities for networking and connectivity services
• Leading network segmentation, security, and firewall strategy
• Optimising resilience, performance, and scalability across critical infrastructure
• Driving observability, telemetry, monitoring, and compliance initiatives
• Collaborating with engineering teams to improve platform reliability and developer experience
• Mentoring engineers and providing technical leadership across multiple teams
• Championing automation and AI-assisted engineering practices
• Extensive experience in Principal, Lead, Staff or Senior Network Engineering roles
• Deep expertise in enterprise networking, routing and switching technologies
• Strong knowledge of BGP, OSPF, VLANs, VXLAN/EVPN, and modern network architectures
• Experience designing and supporting AWS and/or Azure networking solutions
• Advanced firewall, segmentation, and network security expertise
• Strong automation experience using Terraform, Ansible, APIs, and scripting languages
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code and platform engineering principles
• Strong programming skills in Python, Go, PowerShell, Bash, or similar
• Proven experience influencing architecture and technical strategy
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills

Preferred Experience

• Juniper and Cisco networking technologies
• Palo Alto Firewalls and Panorama
• HAProxy Enterprise
• NetBox
• Splunk
• HashiCorp Consul
• Experience leveraging AI tools and automation within engineering environments

Why Apply?

• Fully Remote UK-Based Role
• Opportunity to shape enterprise-scale networking strategy
• Significant influence across cloud, platform, infrastructure and security teams
• Work with modern automation and Infrastructure as Code technologies
• Help drive AI-assisted engineering and operational excellence
• Senior technical leadership role with high visibility and impact

This position is fully remote within the UK , however applicants must already have permanent eligibility to work in the UK . Unfortunately, visa sponsorship is not available.