Principal Engineer, Equinix
Product Software
$213-319k
+ Bonus
Office located in Redwood City, CA
Digital infrastructure company
Be an early applicant
Digital infrastructure company
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$213-319k
+ Bonus
Office located in Redwood City, CA
1001+ employees
Company mission
To provide finance, manufacturing, transport, government, and healthcare organizations a cloud-first world.
Role
Who you are
- Experience: 12+ years of software development experience, with at least 6+ years in a Principal, Architect, or high-impact Technical Lead role. You have a proven track record of delivering large-scale distributed systems from initial concept to global production
- Education: Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, Software Engineering, or a related field
- Deep fluency in the 7-layer OSI model and its application in developing management and control plane software
- Expertise in Cloud Networking and Virtual Network Functions (VNF), specifically how they interface with physical infrastructure
- Hands-on mastery of Kubernetes (K8s) and Docker, with experience architecting containerized microservices at scale
- Working experience with high-throughput messaging services like Apache Kafka for real-time data orchestration
- Expertise in choosing and tuning RDBMS and NoSQL technologies (e.g., PostgreSQL, Cassandra, or Redis) based on specific consistency and availability requirements
- Expert-level proficiency in REST API design (OpenAPI/Swagger)
- Experience building "Northbound" interfaces for customer consumption and "Southbound" interfaces for hardware/network automation
- Strategic AI Oversight: Proven ability to evaluate and integrate Generative AI and Agentic workflows into the software development lifecycle to drive engineering productivity
- Architectural Vision for AI: Experience defining the use of LLMs, Function Calling, and emerging standards like Model Context Protocol (MCP) to transform legacy manual processes into autonomous, self-healing services
- Exceptional Communication: Ability to translate complex technical "debt" or architectural needs into business value for executive stakeholders
- Mentorship: A passion for developing the next generation of engineers through rigorous code reviews and architectural coaching
What the job involves
- As the Principal Engineer for Equinix Fabric Product Software, you are the visionary architect for the platforms that power Equinix’s global interconnection services
- You will work with product management team and cross-functional engineering teams, analyze product requirements, lead architecture design, define APIs and contracts
- You will be able to lead a small engineering team to develop product software from PoC to public release, to deploy in production, and resolve customer issues
- Platform Vision: Define and drive the multi-year technical roadmap to evolve Equinix Fabric into a fully programmable, self-service Connectivity-as-a-Service (CaaS) platform
- AI & Agentic Workflows: Architect the integration of Generative AI, LLMOps, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) into the product lifecycle. Lead initiatives to move from manual workflows to "Agentic" automation for service provisioning and customer support
- Cross-Functional Influence: Act as a force multiplier by bridging the gap between Product Management, Network Engineering, and DevOps to ensure technical designs align with long-term business scale
- System Design: Lead the architecture of high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems, ensuring adherence to SOLID, Clean Architecture, and cloud-native design patterns
- API First Strategy: Standardize API contracts and Northbound/Southbound interfaces to ensure seamless integration across the Equinix ecosystem and partner clouds (AWS, Azure, GCP)
- Technical Governance: Oversee deep-dive design reviews and set the "gold standard" for code quality, security, and scalability across multiple engineering pods
- Complex Problem Solving: Serve as the final escalation point for the most challenging technical "bottlenecks," from deep-seated concurrency issues to global-scale performance tuning
- Mentorship: Level up Staff and Senior engineers through strategic coaching, fostering a culture of technical curiosity and engineering excellence
- Emerging Tech Advocacy: Continuously evaluate and prototype emerging technologies to keep Equinix at the frontier of the industry
Our take
Equinix is a veteran player in the digital infrastructure market, connecting industry-leading organizations in finance, manufacturing, retail, transportation, government, healthcare, and education.
The company provides a range of services within the categories of digital, support, data center, and interconnection, with capabilities including, for example, simplifying hybrid cloud deployments or securing on-site deployments. It has an extensive range of partners, granting its clients access to a vast range of industry-leading technologies atop its own offerings.
With a wide global presence, Equinix has secured a path to continued success by its ability to keep abreast of developments in the space. The company is comfortably positioned to remain a robust and leading player across multiple growth avenues and can be expected to make more smart developments and partnerships in the future.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
9% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Company HQ
Redwood Shores, Redwood City, CA
Leadership
Adaire Fox-Martin
(CEO & President)Prior to becoming CEO of Equinix in 2024, Adaire spent nearly 3 years at Google in various roles, including Head of Google Ireland and President of Google Cloud Go to Market. She also spent nearly 14 years at SAP and over 18 years at Oracle Corporation.
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