Principal Front-End Network Engineer

Principal Front-End Network Engineer, AI Infrastructure Operations

Location: Remote

Job Type: Full time

About Us

Bridge Source Utilities Solutions is a Smart Grid Advisory \& Strategic Staffing Solutions firm focused on connecting multinational Utility corporations with exceptional human beings. Founded in 2012 with the vision to assist companies and resources to develop a clear path for achieving their goals, BridgeSource provides advice and a connect workforce in the areas of grid modernization, technology transformations, project management, change adoption, distribution operations, and capital investment planning.

Position Overview

Our client provides cost-effective, high-performance infrastructure for AI start-ups and large enterprise customers. They enable AI-focused companies to achieve superior results by reducing the complexity of AI development. Their GPU cloud bolsters technical capabilities and directly supports strategic business outcomes, including cost management, rapid innovation, and environmental responsibility.

Our Client’s Network Operations and Engineering teams operate some of the most demanding networking environments in the industry, supporting large-scale AI GPU clusters where network performance directly impacts customer outcomes.

We’re looking for a Senior Principal Front End Network Engineer – AI Infrastructure to provide technical leadership across their front-end networking domain.

This role is focused on owning the reliability, scalability, and long-term evolution of our high-performance Ethernet front-end networks. These networks support inference traffic, cluster management, data ingress/egress, shared storage connectivity, long-haul circuits, and carrier handoffs. You will operate as a senior technical authority, influencing architecture, standards, and operational practices across teams while tackling the most complex front-end network challenges in the platform.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Owning the technical direction and operational strategy for front-end AI infrastructure networks at the highest level
• Designing, reviewing, and evolving large-scale Ethernet leaf-spine / Clos fabric architectures (including Arista and Nokia platforms) to support future growth, inference workloads, and storage requirements
• Acting as the senior-most escalation point for the most complex front-end network incidents, guiding deep technical investigations and systemic fixes
• Driving cross-team and cross-functional initiatives to improve fabric reliability, performance predictability, observability, and operational maturity at scale
• Defining standards for hardware configuration, routing, congestion management, firmware lifecycle management, automation, and change safety across Nvidia Cumulus, Arista EOS and Nokia platforms
• Partnering with SRE, Compute Platform, Storage, and Network Architecture teams to influence end-to-end system design, including long-haul/DCI circuits and storage network integration
• Mentoring senior and principal-level network engineers, raising the bar for operational rigor and technical excellence across the organization
• Driving measurable improvements in uptime, latency consistency, capacity efficiency, and incident reduction for front-end services

QUALIFICATIONS* 12\+ years of experience in network engineering, with deep focus on hyperscale data center, cloud, or AI infrastructure networking

• Expert-level operational and architectural experience with large-scale Ethernet data center fabrics (leaf-spine / Clos topologies)
• Strong hands-on expertise with Nvidia (Cumulus), Arista (EOS / Etherlink) and/or Nokia (7220 IXR, 7250 IXR, 7750 SR series) platforms in production environments at scale
• Deep understanding of modern data center routing and control planes (BGP, OSPF, ECMP, EVPN-VXLAN)
• Proven experience with long-haul circuits, DCI, and optical transport (dark fiber, carrier Ethernet, coherent optics, ZR/ZR\+)
• Strong background in storage networking over Ethernet and shared storage connectivity at hyperscale
• Demonstrated ability to debug and resolve complex cross-layer issues spanning hardware, optics, routing, and application layers
• Proven ability to lead complex technical initiatives across teams and influence strategy without direct authority
• A systems-level mindset, balancing performance, reliability, scalability, and operational cost at the highest level

Preferred Qualifications (Nice to have):

• Extensive experience with Nvidia, Arista or Nokia platforms at hyperscale or large AI infrastructure scale
• Deep familiarity with front-end network design patterns for massive AI clusters (inference, management, and storage tiers)
• Experience designing or operating large-scale DCI / long-haul optical or carrier networks
• Strong automation and tooling experience (Python, Ansible, validation frameworks, telemetry pipelines)
• Prior experience influencing platform or infrastructure strategy at significant scale