Network Development Engineer II- Backbone Controller

The AWS Networking organization is hiring, and we’re looking for talented Network Development Engineers (NDE) to join our Backbone Controllers Team. Within Networking, we’re confronting and solving complex and high-stake challenges. Our teams support all aspects of connectivity to/from Amazon and the outside world, as well as the connectivity between Amazon’s data centers and services. As a member of one our network engineering teams, you will play a part in designing and architecting automation solutions that simply cannot fail, must scale infinitely, and can never constrain growth or innovation.

This opportunity sits within our AWS Backbone Controllers team. The team is responsible for building a new SDN controller solution that provided Traffic Engineering solution to the AWS Global Backbone that interconnects our Regions as well as partnering with our internal customers. We control terabits of traffic in and out of our networks each day and are responsible for the ingress and egress points of traffic entering and leaving Amazon as well as the entirety of all internal and customer traffic that rides our global backbone. Engineers on this team make day-to-day and strategic decisions that carry a huge amount of responsibility and impact.

AWS Infrastructure Services owns the design, planning, delivery, and operation of all AWS global infrastructure. In other words, we’re the people who keep the cloud running. We support all AWS data centers and all of the servers, storage, networking, power, and cooling equipment that ensure our customers have continual access to the innovation they rely on. We work on the most challenging problems, with thousands of variables impacting the supply chain — and we’re looking for talented people who want to help.

You’ll join a diverse team of software, hardware, and network engineers, supply chain specialists, security experts, operations managers, and other vital roles. You’ll collaborate with people across AWS to help us deliver the highest standards for safety and security while providing seemingly infinite capacity at the lowest possible cost for our customers. And you’ll experience an inclusive culture that welcomes bold ideas and empowers you to own them to completion.

Key job responsibilities
As a Network Development Engineer at Amazon, your core job responsibility is to design network topologies, architectures, and accelerate network automation. We listen to our customers (both internal and external), but we also listen to our teams. Our Engineers contribute materially to each team’s roadmap, and constantly help us to decide what’s most important. Together, you and your senior team will decide on the projects that best support your team’s mission. You will have the resources and time necessary to understand, scope, and deliver these solutions. The primary area of responsibility you and your team will have is to design ahead of customer or technology needs, always predicting and solving for problems that have not yet occurred. This takes the form of creating High Level Design (HLD) documents, working with internal stakeholders to influence technology roadmaps, constructing and testing your solutions, and providing support to the teams that will deploy and operate these designs.

We’re interested in engineers with experience having designed, operated, and implemented automation of very large scale networks. Candidates should understand the theory behind and have deep operational knowledge of routing protocols with particular emphasis on their impact to hardware platforms.
We’re interested in engineers with experience having designed, operated, and implemented networks of very large scale, and those well versed in the operation of the Internet routing hierarchy. Candidates should understand the theory behind and have deep operational knowledge of routing protocols with particular emphasis on their impact to hardware platforms. We’re looking for those who have pushed platforms to their limits, understand how to work within the limitations imposed by third-party software and how to avoid them through your designs.

A day in the life
Engineers in the Backbone Enterprise and Regional Engineering (BERE) organization have a wide range
of responsibilities; we work with internal partners to develop and implement the next-generation platforms along with the tooling ecosystems to support these platforms driving efficiency and scalability through the automation of builds, configuration deployment, and the scaling of capacity. As our network is one of the largest in the world, there is no blueprint allowing our engineers to develop solutions to complex challenges that we face daily. We encourage durable solutions that
look around corners while taking into consideration our customer needs from a cost, performance, and
reliability perspective. Our team develops tooling that provides the required visibility and control of
traffic across the network, while prioritizing the automatic mitigation of events to minimize the impact
to our customers during events.
In this role you:
• Work in a 24x7 team on-call rotation, with ability to drive into workplace for critical events/needs.
• Manage customers during problem resolution and operating efficiently under pressure.
• Sit at the computer during scheduled work hours with appropriate breaks while maintaining a high level of alertness and attention to detail.
• Travel to data center/network sites and Amazon/customer offices as needed.

About the team
Diverse Experiences
AWS values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying.

Why AWS?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that’s why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses.

Inclusive Team Culture
Here at AWS, it’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empower us to be proud of our differences. Ongoing events and learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) and AmazeCon (gender diversity) conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness.

Mentorship & Career Growth
We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional.

Work/Life Balance
We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve in the cloud.

We are open to hiring candidates to work out of one of the following locations:

Dublin, D, IRL | Dublin, IRL | Dublin, LM, IRL

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

- A Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience is mandatory.
- Excellent IP networking fundamentals and extensive experience in the application of IP protocols as well as network analysis fundamentals and robust troubleshooting skills. (Troubleshooting traffic engineering using BGP and large scale network design and maintenance is critical.) In-depth knowledge of and experience with major internet routing protocols; specifically BGP (confederations and complex route reflector topologies), OSPF, MPLS, RSVP and ISIS
- Understanding and experience with Internet peering ecosystems and Internet scale traffic engineering
- In-depth knowledge of and experience with major router platforms; specifically with Juniper QFX and MX platforms including all compatible processors and line cards for these platforms.
- An understanding of both network hardware and packet forwarding architecture.Experience managing large projects to completion is a must. NDEs are expected to self-manage several projects at a time, providing regular status updates and identifying and pushing through obstacles.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

- Candidates should have industry experience in a similar environment e.g ISP, peering and exchange, and large (IP) carrier networks.
- Background in high availability, global backbone design and architecture is highly preferred.
- Strong Unix/Linux skills and the ability to script in Python, Perl, shell, C or C++ is desirable, SDN is a reality in AWS Networking. Daily activities will involve applying networking knowledge to SDN and Network Automation tools.
- Understanding of Hardware Load Balancers in a large data center environment
- Expert-level certifications (e.g. CCIE, JNCIE) a huge plus.

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