Principal Network Engineer

Location: Cambridge, MA, USA; network environments span Cambridge, San Francisco, and London.

Expected base salary range: $204,000–$272,000 USD annually.

Company

hirify.global is building AI-powered Scientific Superintelligence and autonomous AI Science Factory instruments for scientific discovery across medicine, materials, and energy.

What you will do

• Own the architecture, design, and roadmap for the multi-site network, including SD-WAN/SASE, enterprise firewalls, and secure remote access.
• Design VLANs, subnets, segmentation, and IT/OT convergence patterns across corporate IT, labs, and robotics environments.
• Drive network infrastructure migrations and hardening, including firewall-to-SASE cutovers and maintenance windows.
• Build network visibility, monitoring, telemetry, DNS, IP addressing, and naming standards across labs, buildings, and geographies.
• Act as the senior escalation point for complex production-impacting incidents and create runbooks for the broader IT team.
• Manage MSPs and vendors, mentor network engineers, support lab and facility expansions, and advise leadership on architecture tradeoffs.

Requirements

• Typically 10+ years of progressive network engineering experience, or equivalent depth designing and operating multi-site networks.
• Deep hands-on expertise with SD-WAN/SASE platforms such as Cato Networks or similar.
• Strong experience with enterprise firewalls, routing platforms, switching, VLAN segmentation, and subnetting at scale.
• Experience securing and connecting corporate IT with OT, industrial, or lab-instrumentation networks.
• Practical experience implementing network segmentation, zero-trust concepts, and secure remote access.
• Proven ability to manage MSPs and vendors while improving technical outcomes and accountability.
• Strong troubleshooting skills and experience serving as the senior escalation point for production-impacting network issues.
• Excellent communication skills, including explaining network architecture decisions to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Nice to have

• Experience in life sciences, biotech, pharma, or advanced manufacturing environments with lab automation or robotics networks.
• Certifications such as CCNP/CCIE, JNCIP/JNCIE, or equivalent.
• Cloud networking experience with AWS VPC, Transit Gateway, Direct Connect, or similar.
• Infrastructure-as-code experience for network configuration, such as Terraform or Ansible.
• Familiarity with SSO/IdP, Keycloak, or similar identity and access patterns as they intersect with networking and remote access.
• Experience operating in SOC 2 or similarly regulated security environments.
• Experience building an internal network engineering function that reduced reliance on external vendors or MSPs.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time U.S. employees receive medical, dental, and vision coverage, employer-paid life and disability insurance, and generous company-wide holidays.
• Benefits include paid parental leave, educational assistance, commuter benefits, and a subsidized lunch program.
• Flexible time off is provided; bike share memberships are available for office-based employees.
• Full-time employees outside the U.S. receive benefits tailored to their region, with international salaries set to the local market.
• The organization operates with startup speed and emphasizes truth, trust, curiosity, grit, and velocity.