Software Defined Networking Jobs in Philadelphia, PA

Global Head of Network Engineering - Cloud Modernization

Executive Level Direct Hire/Onsite Hybrid

Position Overview

As a global leader accelerates its cloud transformation journey, we are seeking an exceptional Global Head of Networking to lead the evolution of a worldwide network infrastructure. This is a highly visible, enterprise-scale leadership role with global scope, defining and executing the strategy, engineering, and delivery of a global network across public cloud and on-premises environments, ensuring availability, resilience, and security of mission-critical platforms. The role is accountable for transforming a traditional hardware-centric network environment into a modern, cloud-native, software-defined platform supporting global operations, clients, and mission-critical applications.

In this role, you will lead a large, globally distributed organization of engineers and managers — guiding leaders as much as individual contributors — while partnering closely with business stakeholders, IT peers, and strategic vendors to drive infrastructure modernization without compromising world-class availability, reliability, or security.

Drawing inspiration from hyperscale cloud providers such as AWS, the organization is committed to evolving network services beyond traditional networking constructs toward highly automated, self-healing, and fault-tolerant architectures where resilience is engineered into the platform rather than added as an afterthought.

This role requires a unique combination of deep operational expertise in large-scale enterprise networking and a forward-looking vision for the future of cloud-native infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy & Transformation

• Define and execute the global network strategy aligned with enterprise technology and business objectives.
• Lead the transition from legacy infrastructure to cloud-native, software-defined networking models.
• Reimagine how network services are designed, deployed, and operated across the enterprise.

Engineering & Modernization

• Drive adoption of modern engineering practices, including infrastructure-as-code, automated deployment pipelines, intent-based networking, traffic engineering and resilience design, and digital twin simulation.
• Build a highly automated, scalable, and resilient global network platform.
• Lead the evolution toward self-healing and fault-tolerant architectures.
• Apply principles commonly used by hyperscale cloud providers, including distributed traffic management, intelligent path selection, fault-domain isolation, and resilience engineering.
• Implement advanced resiliency strategies including fault isolation, self-healing capabilities, redundancy optimization, and continuous availability engineering.
• Leverage simulation, observability, telemetry, and digital twin technologies to predict, test, and validate network behavior before production deployment.

Operations & Reliability

• Own end-to-end delivery and operations of the global network across multi-cloud environments (e.g., AWS and other providers) and on-premises infrastructure.
• Establish a vision for zero-downtime networking, where failures are anticipated and seamlessly managed.
• Develop and execute a long-term roadmap for network scalability, performance optimization, capacity planning, and operational efficiency.
• Establish metrics and operational standards focused on reliability, service availability, security, and customer experience.

Leadership & Stakeholder Management

• Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing global team of network engineers, architects, and operational leaders, commanding a 75-person department with a $70M+ annual operating budget.
• Govern the technology sector's most pivotal vendor alliances and multi-million dollar contracts, managing strategic relationships and influencing technology direction across critical infrastructure platforms.
• Partner with enterprise technology leaders, including Cloud Engineering, Infrastructure, Security, Application Development, SRE, and Enterprise Architecture teams, to align network strategy with business priorities and deliver integrated solutions.
• Serve as a key executive stakeholder in enterprise-wide technology transformation efforts.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of progressive experience in enterprise networking, infrastructure engineering, or cloud platform leadership.
• Expertise in enterprise-scale network engineering and operations.
• Proven experience managing and stabilizing complex legacy network environments while driving modernization.
• Strong experience with cloud networking (multi-cloud, AWS preferred), hybrid infrastructure environments, and large-scale distributed systems.
• Demonstrated fluency in cloud-native architectures, automation and platform engineering practices, and resilience engineering principles.
• Experience implementing modern networking paradigms such as software-defined networking and infrastructure-as-code.
• Experience implementing automated deployment pipelines, network testing frameworks, and reliability engineering practices.
• Experience leveraging telemetry, observability, analytics, and automation to improve operational outcomes.
• Demonstrated ability to lead large engineering organizations through significant technological and cultural transformation.

Leadership Characteristics

• Visionary leader capable of defining the future state of enterprise networking.
• Strong operational mindset with a commitment to stability, reliability, and execution excellence.
• Data-driven decision maker with a passion for continuous improvement and innovation.
• Exceptional communicator capable of influencing executive stakeholders and technical teams alike.
• Proven ability to lead complex transformations across global organizations.

Key Success Outcomes

• Successful transformation to a cloud-native, software-defined network platform.
• Measurable improvements in network resilience and uptime, deployment speed and automation, and operational efficiency.
• Establishment of a zero-downtime, resilience-first network architecture.
• A next-generation global network platform delivering exceptional resilience, security, scalability, and performance — a foundation for continuous innovation where infrastructure failures are anticipated, managed intelligently, and largely invisible to end users.

To apply, please submit your resume to  

Your candidacy will be held strictly confidential.  Please call me with any questions.

Please add me on LinkedIn — I look forward to connecting with you.

Boyd Kelly
Liberty Personnel Services
www.libertyjobs.com

Jobs: http://www.libertyjobs.com/boyd/jobs
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/boydakelly

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