Job Summary:
Rakuten International is a division of Rakuten Group, Inc., a Japanese global technology leader in services that empower individuals, communities, businesses and society. In this role, you will be responsible for designing, implementing, and managing the organization's network infrastructure to ensure reliable and secure connectivity, while optimizing performance and troubleshooting issues as they arise.
Responsibilities:
• Network Architecture & Design: Lead the design and implementation of highly available, secure, scalable network solutions across LAN, WAN, Data Center, and Cloud environments; ensure solutions integrate with existing systems and support future growth.
• Operational Assessment & Optimization: Assess network infrastructure and operational processes to identify optimization opportunities and risk reduction; regularly review performance and implement improvements to maintain high availability and security.
• Advanced Troubleshooting & RCA: Act as the SME for complex network incidents—perform root cause analysis, implement permanent fixes, and proactively address performance bottlenecks and capacity constraints.
• Network Security & Zero Trust / ZTNA: Design, implement, and manage security solutions including NGFW, IDS/IPS, VPN (IPsec/SSL), NAC, and DDoS mitigation; lead Zero Trust / ZTNA implementations and optimization, including Zscaler ZIA/ZPA, ensuring alignment with security policies and industry standards.
• Cloud Networking: Architect, deploy, and manage public-cloud networking (e.g., AWS VPC, Azure VNet, GCP) including Direct Connect/ExpressRoute, Transit Gateways, and other cloud-native networking capabilities.
• Routing, Switching & WAN Technologies: Provide expert hands-on leadership for advanced routing (BGP/OSPF/EIGRP), MPLS, SD-WAN (e.g., Cisco Viptela/Meraki, FortiManager) and high-performance switching platforms (e.g., Cisco Nexus, Arista).
• Automation & Orchestration: Drive network automation initiatives using Python/Ansible and network automation platforms to streamline configuration, deployment, and operational tasks.
• Load Balancing & Application Delivery: Design and manage ADCs/load balancers (e.g., F5 BIG-IP, Citrix ADC, NGINX) to ensure application high availability and performance.
• Monitoring, Observability & Analytics: Implement and manage monitoring/logging platforms (e.g., SolarWinds, PRTG, Splunk, ELK Stack) to proactively detect issues, analyze performance, and produce actionable insights.
• Program/Project Leadership & Delivery: Provide technical leadership on large-scale network initiatives—coordinate across teams, manage timelines/resources, and ensure deliverables meet operational and compliance standards.
• Standards, Best Practices & Documentation: Develop and maintain network architecture documentation, standards, best practices, configurations, procedures, and diagrams; continuously refine processes to improve service delivery and consistency across projects.
• Mentorship & Leadership: Mentor junior engineers, share troubleshooting/design best practices, and lead technical initiatives from conception through completion.
• Vendor Management: Partner with vendors for technology evaluation, procurement, and support/escalations.
Qualifications:
Required:
• 5-7 years Required
• Bachelor's Degree Required
• Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) Linux (LPIC or RHC) Upon Hire Required
• Routing & Switching: Expert BGP, OSPF, EIGRP, MPLS, VRF, QoS; SD-WAN (Cisco Viptela/Meraki, FortiManager, Silver Peak); Network OS (Cisco IOS-XE/XR, NX-OS; Juniper Junos; Arista EOS); Data center switching (Cisco Nexus, Arista, Juniper QFX).
• Network Security: NGFW (Palo Alto, Cisco FTD, FortiGate); IDS/IPS; VPN (IPsec, SSL); NAC (Cisco ISE, Aruba ClearPass); DDoS mitigation; WAF; segmentation & Zero Trust principles; Zscaler (ZIA, ZPA for SWG/cloud firewall/ZTNA) and ZDX for digital experience monitoring/troubleshooting.
• Cloud Networking: AWS (VPC, Direct Connect, Transit Gateway, Route 53, Security Groups, NACLs); Azure (VNet, ExpressRoute, Virtual WAN, NSGs, Azure Firewall); GCP (VPC, Interconnect, Cloud VPN, Cloud Routers).
• Automation & Orchestration: Python; Ansible/Puppet/Chef; REST APIs; NetConf/YANG; network automation platforms (Cisco NSO, Itential).
• Load Balancing / ADC: F5 BIG-IP (LTM, GTM, ASM); Citrix ADC (NetScaler); NGINX; HAProxy.
• Wireless: Enterprise Wi Fi (Cisco Meraki, Aruba, Ruckus); wireless security (WPA2/3, 802.1X).
• Monitoring & Observability: SNMP; NetFlow/IPFIX; sFlow; NPM tools (SolarWinds, ExtraHop, AppDynamics); log management/SIEM (Splunk, ELK Stack, Sumo Logic).
Preferred:
• 8-11 years Preferred
• Master's Degree Preferred
• Linux (LPIC or RHC) certification Upon Hire Preferred
• Cloud computing (AWS, Azure, or GCP) certification Upon Hire Preferred
• Preferred (Voice/Video): QoS for VoIP/video; SIP, H.323; Cisco Unified Communications; Microsoft Teams/Zoom network integration.
• Certifications (Highly Preferred): Cisco CCNP Enterprise/Data Center/Security; (CCIE preferred); Juniper JNCIP/JNCIE; Palo Alto PCNSE; Fortinet NSE 4+; AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty; Azure Network Engineer Associate.
Company:
In Japanese, Rakuten stands for “optimism.” It means we are hopeful for the future and believe we can make tomorrow better by what we do today. Founded in 1997, the company is headquartered in San Mateo, USA, with a team of 1001-5000 employees. The company is currently Late Stage.