Principal Network & Cloud Networking Engineer (6 Months Contract)

About the role

We are seeking a seasoned Principal Network & Cloud Networking Engineer with deep expertise in FortiGate firewalls, hybrid/multi-cloud connectivity, and secure cloud network architecture. In this strategic role, you will lead the design, implementation, and optimization of cloud and on-premises networking solutions, ensuring seamless and secure connectivity across regions, clouds, and environments.

What you'll do

• Designing and implementing highly available, scalable, and secure hybrid and multi-cloud network architectures across AWS, GCP, Azure, and on-prem
  Building and managing global SD-WAN, site-to-site VPNs, and interconnects (e.g., Direct Connect, Interconnect, ExpressRoute)
  Owning Layer 3–7 network design, segmentation strategy, traffic flow optimization, and firewall policy enforcement
• Ensuring end-to-end network observability, latency analysis, and proactive incident management
• Serving as the SME for FortiGate firewall deployments (physical and virtual) across data centers and cloud environments
• Defining and enforcing security zones, NAT rules, SSL inspection, and IPS/IDS capabilities
• Collaborating with the Cloud Security Architect on zero-trust, micro segmentation, and edge protection designs
• Maintaining firewall rule hygiene, audit readiness, and compliance alignment (e.g., PDPL, GDPR, ISO 27001).
• Designing and maintaining secure, resilient cloud connectivity strategies including hub-and-spoke, transit gateway, and hybrid mesh topologies
• Implementing cloud-native networking services (e.g., VPC, VNet, Shared VPC, Cloud NAT, Private Link, etc.)
• Supporting cross-cloud service communications, domain resolution, and egress traffic control
• Partnering with the FinOps Architect to ensure efficient and cost-effective network design
• Acting as a technical leader across infrastructure, cloud, and security teams, providing expertise on all things networking
• Partnering closely with platform and SRE teams to deliver production-grade network capabilities
• Mentoring mid- and senior-level engineers and help shape internal network engineering standards
• Participating in root cause analysis and postmortems for major network-impacting events

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience in enterprise networking, with at least 5 years focused on cloud networking and firewall engineering
• Deep expertise with FortiGate firewalls (configuration, policy management, HA, logging, IPS, SSL inspection)
• Strong experience with multi-cloud environments including AWS, GCP, Azure—especially around secure connectivity
• Familiarity with Terraform, Infrastructure-as-Code, and automated network provisioning
• Solid understanding of DNS, BGP, IPSec, NAT, VLANs, routing protocols, and SD-WAN
• Knowledge of regulatory compliance and network security standards (PDPL, NIST, ISO, etc.)
• Excellent documentation, troubleshooting, and cross-functional collaboration skillIndustry
• certifications (e.g., NSE4+, CCNP, GCP/AWS Networking Specialty) are a strong plus