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Principal Network Engineer Jobs in Raleigh, NC (NOW HIRING)

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Principal Network Engineer information

See Raleigh, NC salary details

$20.4K

$129.5K

$198.8K

How much do principal network engineer jobs pay per year?

As of Aug 14, 2026, the average yearly pay for principal network engineer in Raleigh, NC is $129,523.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $113,700.00 and $153,600.00 per year, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What is the difference between Principal Network Engineer vs Network Architect?

AspectPrincipal Network EngineerNetwork Architect
CredentialsBS in Computer Science or related, Cisco/Juniper certificationsBS in Computer Science or related, Cisco/Juniper certifications
Work EnvironmentDesign, implement, and troubleshoot network solutions within organizationsDesign overall network infrastructure and architecture for organizations
Employer & Industry UsageUsed across industries for senior technical rolesUsed in enterprise and large organizations for planning network systems
Common Search & ComparisonOften compared for senior technical expertiseCompared for strategic network planning roles

The main difference is that a Principal Network Engineer focuses on implementing and troubleshooting network solutions, while a Network Architect designs the overall network architecture and strategy. Both roles require similar certifications and work in similar environments, but their core responsibilities differ in scope and focus.

What are the main challenges principal network engineers face when leading large-scale network projects?

Principal Network Engineers often encounter challenges such as coordinating cross-functional teams, designing scalable solutions that align with business goals, and managing the integration of emerging technologies into existing infrastructure. Balancing competing priorities—like security, performance, and budget constraints—while ensuring minimal downtime is a common part of the role. Effective communication and leadership skills are essential, as Principal Network Engineers frequently serve as the technical authority and must guide both junior engineers and stakeholders through complex decisions.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a principal network engineer, and why are they important?

To thrive as a Principal Network Engineer, you need deep expertise in network architecture, routing and switching, security protocols, and typically a bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field. Familiarity with enterprise networking hardware, software-defined networking (SDN), firewalls, and certifications such as CCNP or CCIE are essential. Outstanding problem-solving, leadership, and communication skills help you manage complex projects and guide technical teams. These competencies are critical to ensuring reliable, secure, and scalable network infrastructures that support organizational goals.

What is a principal network engineer?

Principal Network Engineers are senior-level professionals responsible for designing, implementing, and managing complex network infrastructures within an organization. They lead network architecture initiatives, oversee security protocols, and ensure high availability and performance of network systems. In addition, they often mentor junior engineers, set technical standards, and collaborate with other IT teams to align network solutions with business goals. Their expertise is crucial for maintaining reliable and scalable connectivity in large enterprises.

What does a principal network engineer do?

As a principal network engineer, you are responsible for the daily operations of a computer system. Your responsibilities are to install, organize, and support systems for an organization. The systems you work with often aid a company in its communications, as with local area networks and wide area networks. Other duties include the installation of hardware, regular system maintenance, and optimization of network performance. You might also train individuals in the use of relevant software or hardware. In some cases, you might help with email and data storage.

What are popular job titles related to Principal Network Engineer jobs in Raleigh, NC?

For Principal Network Engineer jobs in Raleigh, NC, the most frequently searched job titles are:

Infographic showing various Principal Network Engineer job openings in Raleigh, NC as of August 2026, with employment types broken down into 92% Full Time, 4% Part Time, and 4% Contract. Highlights an 83% In-person, and 17% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $129,523 per year, or $62.3 per hour.

Senior Consulting Principal AWS Cloud Engineer

LexisNexis

Raleigh, NC • On-site, Remote

Full-time

Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, Retirement, PTO

Re-posted 4 days ago


LexisNexis rating

7.6

Company rating: 7.6 out of 10

Based on 17 frontline employees who took The Breakroom Quiz

190th of 491 rated business services


Job description

** Please note that Raleigh, NC would be the preferred location for this role. We are open to hiring on a remote basis in the United States, with the understanding that the selected individual will work a U.S. eastern time zone schedule. **

About Our Team:

LexisNexis Legal & Professional serves customers in over 150 countries with 11,800 employees globally. We are part of RELX, a provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers. Our company leads in deploying AI and advanced technologies to the legal market, enhancing productivity and transforming the business and practice of law. We use ethical and powerful generative AI solutions with a flexible approach, prioritizing the best model for each legal use case.

About the Role:

As a Senior Consulting Principal AWS Cloud Engineer, you will provide technical strategy, deep AWS expertise, and architectural leadership, guiding teams and influencing multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud best practices. The ideal candidate is an expert in AWS, Kubernetes, DevOps, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and security architectures, with a strong ability to mentor and drive technical decision-making.

This is an advanced individual contributor role with a focus on enterprise-level impact, bridging hands-on engineering, architecture, and technical strategy.

Responsibilities:

Enterprise Cloud Architecture & Design

  • Architect highly available, fault-tolerant, and scalable AWS cloud environments, optimizing for security, cost, and performance.

  • Define enterprise-wide AWS architectural patterns, frameworks, and best practices to ensure standardization and operational excellence.

  • Lead AWS multi-account strategy, implementing AWS Control Tower, Organizations, and IAM governance.

  • Architect hybrid-cloud and multi-cloud solutions, integrating on-prem and SaaS platforms with AWS.

  • Design and optimize Kubernetes-based microservices architectures (i.e. EKS, Helm, Istio,).

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) & Automation

  • Lead the implementation of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, and AWS CDK.

  • Automate cloud provisioning, configuration management, and infrastructure scaling.

  • Enhance self-healing architectures, implementing automated failover, auto-scaling policies, and event-driven automation.

  • Review and continue to develop multi-region fail over and high availability (HA) strategies using various AWS services.

Security & Compliance Architecture

  • Establish zero-trust security principles, embedding encryption, IAM least privilege, and AWS security automation.

  • Implement and manage AWS Security Hub, GuardDuty, AWS WAF, AWS KMS, and IAM boundary policies.

  • Drive compliance and risk management, ensuring SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and GDPR requirements are met.

  • Architect secure Kubernetes workloads, leveraging Pod Security Policies, and AWS IAM roles for service accounts.

Cloud-Native Technologies & Performance Optimization

  • Optimize AWS serverless architectures, integrating Lambda, Step Functions, API Gateway, and EventBridge.

  • Improve Kubernetes networking, ingress control, and observability, leveraging AWS ALB, Nginx, and Service Mesh.

  • Architect event-driven architectures for real-time applications using AWS Kinesis, SQS, SNS, and DynamoDB Streams.

  • Design and implement high-performance cloud storage and database architectures using AWS Aurora, Redshift, DynamoDB, and Elasticache.

Observability, SRE, & Cloud Operations Excellence

  • Establish enterprise-wide cloud monitoring strategies, using AWS CloudWatch, Datadog, Splunk, and Coralogix.

  • Assist in driving SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) principles, enhancing incident response, automated remediations, and operational excellence.

  • Develop real-time logging and event correlation to enable predictive analytics and anomaly detection in AWS environments.

Technical Mentorship & Thought Leadership

  • Act as a senior technical authority, mentoring Principal and Senior Cloud Engineers in AWS best practices.

  • Lead internal AWS technical reviews, architecture discussions, and AWS Well-Architected Framework assessments.

  • Engage in industry events, open-source contributions, and technical blogging, reinforcing cloud engineering excellence within the organization.

Requirements:

Technical Expertise

  • 12+ years of IT experience, with at least 7+ years focused on AWS cloud engineering, architecture, and automation

  • Deep AWS expertise, including EC2, EKS, Lambda, API Gateway, RDS, VPC, CloudFormation, IAM, Transit Gateway, and Route 53

  • Expert in Kubernetes architecture (EKS, Helm, Daemon Sets, StatefulSets, Karpenter, external-dns, aws-cni)

  • Advanced Infrastructure as Code (IaC) expertise with Terraform, AWS CDK, and CloudFormation

  • Proficiency in DevOps & automation tools, including Jenkins, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, Azure DevOps

  • Mastery of AWS networking, including VPC design, Transit Gateway, Direct Connect, PrivateLink, and Route 53 latency-based routing

  • Deep expertise in security and compliance frameworks (IAM, AWS KMS, AWS Secrets Manager, WAF, AWS Shield)

  • Experience designing high-scale, production-grade automation solutions using Python, Bash, or Go

Preferred Certifications

  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional (Highly Preferred)

  • AWS Certified Security - Specialty or Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)

  • AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional is a plus

Leadership & Soft Skills

  • Proven ability to architect and optimize large-scale AWS environments

  • Strong mentoring skills, guiding and upskilling engineers in best practices

  • Exceptional communication skills, capable of presenting to executive stakeholders and influencing cloud adoption strategies

  • Ability to work independently while collaborating effectively across engineering, security, and operations teams

  • Passion for continuous learning and cloud innovation, staying at the forefront of AWS advancements

Work in a way that works for you
We promote a healthy work/life balance across the organization. We offer an appealing working prospect for our people. With numerous well-being initiatives, shared parental leave, study assistance, and sabbaticals, we will help you meet your immediate responsibilities and your long-term goals.

Working flexible hours - flexing the times when you work in the day to help you fit everything in and work when you are the most productive.


Working for you
We know that your well-being and happiness are key to a long and successful career. These are some of the benefits we are delighted to offer:

  • Health Benefits: Comprehensive, multi-carrier program for medical, dental and vision benefits

  • Retirement Benefits: 401(k) with match and an Employee Share Purchase Plan

  • Wellbeing: Wellness platform with incentives, Headspace app subscription, Employee Assistance and Time-off Programs

  • Short-and-Long Term Disability, Life and Accidental Death Insurance, Critical Illness, and Hospital Indemnity

  • Family Benefits, including bonding and family care leaves, adoption, and surrogacy benefits

  • Health Savings, Health Care, Dependent Care and Commuter Spending Accounts

  • Up to two days of paid leave each to participate in Employee Resource Groups and to volunteer with your charity of choice


About the Business

LexisNexis Legal & Professional provides legal, regulatory, and business information and analytics that help customers increase their productivity, improve decision-making, achieve better outcomes, and advance the rule of law around the world. As a digital pioneer, the company was the first to bring legal and business information online with its Lexis and Nexis services.

U.S. National Base Pay Range: $118,300 - $219,800. Geographic differentials may apply in some locations to better reflect local market rates. This job is eligible for an annual incentive bonus.

We know your well-being and happiness are key to a long and successful career. We are delighted to offer country specific benefits. Click here to access benefits specific to your location.

We are committed to providing a fair and accessible hiring process. If you have a disability or other need that requires accommodation or adjustment, please let us know by completing our Applicant Request Support Formor please contact 1-855-833-5120.

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We are an equal opportunity employer: qualified applicants are considered for and treated during employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, national origin, citizenship status, disability status, protected veteran status, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law.

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