Senior Network Engineer

Job Description:

Rakuten International is a division of Rakuten Group, Inc., a Japanese global technology leader in services that empower individuals, communities, businesses and society. Headquartered in San Mateo, California with more than 4,000 employees worldwide, the Rakuten International business portfolio includes market leaders in e-commerce, digital marketing, advertising, communications and entertainment. We create products and services that provide exceptional value by aligning members and the businesses that want to engage them in a shared community. 

Job Summary

Rakuten is seeking an experienced Senior Network Engineer to join our Cloud Platform Supervisory Department (CPSD) team. The CPSD team is part of a global IT ecosystem across Japan, the US and Europe. The team manages Rakuten’s private Cloud platform, by supporting the global backbone and network infrastructure of the group’s multiple datacenters, catering to all the business needs of its various companies. You’ll collaborate and interact with the group’s subsidiaries and Business Units. This team provides 24/7 support and is responsible for all network services. This role is in Boston, MA. This role is onsite 3 days per week.

Key Responsibilities

As part of Rakuten’s global Cloud Platform team, you will be handling operations, implementing and maintaining existing networks, defining and designing new networks and the integration of new technologies. You’ll be involved in projects ranging from deployment of new datacenters, monitoring, capacity planning and overall infrastructure expansions. Responsibilities include:

• Network administration and engineering for Rakuten’s global platforms
• Monitoring of our IT infrastructure and platforms, troubleshooting, and solving the emerging problems, possibly in collaboration with the developers of various applications
• Participating in release management, patching, upgrades, and version control across hybrid environments. Using CI/CD practices (Jenkins, Git workflows, and infrastructure-as-code principles)
• Development of new tools and frameworks for the operations, or improvement of existing tools and frameworks, to facilitate automated operations of our platforms and infrastructure
• Participating in 24x7 on-call rotation of 1 week on-call shifts
• Investigating and improving open-source technologies relevant for the operations of our platforms and infrastructure
• Understanding the requirements of potential customers and developing demos and prototypes
• Planning the operations process, executing the operations according to plan, and reporting progress to management
• Working closely with the network teams in Japan and Europe
• Travel to Japan and Europe are to be considered

Qualifications

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• Experience configuring and troubleshooting complex network environments made of routers, switches, load-balancers, firewalls
• Good understanding of IP routing protocols such as BGP and OSPF for IPv4 and IPv6, switching, MPLS (L2/L3 VPN), VRFs, NAT, ACLs, VLANs, MLAG/LAG, SNMP
• Good understanding of datacenter networking technologies such as VXLAN EVPN
• Experience with some of the following platforms: Cisco Nexus, Juniper MX, Arista, Dell
• Solid understanding of 1G/10G/40G physical cabling/transceiver standards: fiber optic types/sizes/capabilities, transceiver types/options
• Fundamental knowledge of Linux operating systems
• Strong understanding of network technologies, including capacity and bandwidth management, network automation, and AIOps
• Ability to work effectively in global, cross-functional team environments
• Knowledge and experience in implementing best operational practices to improve network service quality

Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science; or equivalent experience
• 7+ years in network infrastructure engineering, with cloud and data center experience

Nice to have

• Some experience with major cloud providers (AWS/GCP/Azure), especially on network features
• Exposure to open-source networking technologies (FRR, Cumulus Linux, SONiC, whitebox switches)
• Python scripting or another programming language
• Network automation with Ansible or Chef
• Some experience with flow analysis, metering, trace analysis with Wireshark
• Proficiency in Japanese

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Five Principles for Success
Our worldwide practices describe specific behaviors that make Rakuten unique and united across the world. We expect Rakuten employees to model these 5 Shugi Principles of Success.

Always improve, Always Advance - Only be satisfied with complete success - Kaizen
Passionately Professional - Take an uncompromising approach to your work and be determined to be the best
Hypothesize - Practice - Validate – Shikumika - Use the Rakuten Cycle to succeed in unknown territory
Maximize Customer Satisfaction - The greatest satisfaction for our teams is seeing their customers smile
Speed!! Speed!! Speed!! - Always be conscious of time - take charge, set clear goals, and engage your team

At the time of posting, Rakuten expects the base compensation for this role to be within the range shown below. Individual compensation will vary based on job-related factors, including the skills, qualifications, and experience of the successful candidate as well as business need and geographic location. The successful applicant for this role will be eligible for discretionary bonus, health, vision, dental insurance, 401k matching, PTO, Volunteer Time Off (VTO), and other employee benefits as the company implements.