Principal Transport and IP Network Engineer

The role

The Principal Transport and IP Network Engineer will support the complete networking solution within the Gateway, including switches, routers, firewalls, and the optical matrix. This role involves defining, lifecycle-managing, and documenting the network SKU and leading the networking First Office Application for new Gateway SKUs.

What you will do

• Own the complete networking solution within the Gateway, including switches, routers, firewalls, and the optical matrix.
• Define, lifecycle-manage, and document the network SKU across all Gateway types.
• Develop and maintain acceptance testing procedures, pass/fail criteria, and golden configurations for the network SKU.
• Support integration of networking equipment with other Gateway elements.
• Lead the networking First Office Application (FOA) for each new Gateway SKU.
• Design resilient connectivity from gateways to MNO interconnects, and engineer gateway diversity and redundancy.
• Define routing, traffic-engineering, and failover behavior, and build scalable IP address and routing architectures.
• Establish latency, packet-loss, and jitter objectives, and define QoS for voice, messaging, and data.
• Integrate terrestrial fiber and cloud environments, and design for gateway outage, transport failure, and congestion.
• Implement telemetry for path-level performance and troubleshoot packet loss, asymmetric routing, and service degradation.

Required qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, telecommunications engineering, or a related technical field.
• 5+ years of experience in carrier-grade IP network engineering.
• Experience in design, deployment, and operations of carrier-grade IP networks.
• Experience defining hardware/software SKUs, acceptance test plans, and golden configurations for complex network products.
• Experience leading First Office Application (FOA) or first-deployment validation efforts.
• Hands-on competence across MPLS and segment routing, BGP and routing policy, SDN, traffic engineering, QoS, multicast, data-center and cloud networking, transport resiliency, network security, and gat
• Experience designing resilient, redundant network architectures spanning terrestrial fiber, cloud, and remote/edge sites.
• Ability to work in a standard office environment and use a computer for extended periods.
• Ability to work in laboratory and technical testing environments utilizing network test equipment and diagnostic tools.
• Ability to travel periodically to support deployment, integration, testing, and operational activities.
• Ability to safely handle and move technical equipment and hardware components when necessary.
• Ability to capture, analyze, and document technical test procedures, results, and system performance data.

Nice to have

• Experience with satellite ground-segment, teleport, or other geographically distributed gateway networking environments.
• Industry certifications such as CCIE, JNCIE, or equivalent vendor-neutral routing/switching credentials.
• Experience working directly with Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) on interconnect design or interoperability testing.
• Familiarity with NCC/OSS systems and their integration with IP transport infrastructure.
• Experience with network telemetry, automation, and infrastructure-as-code tooling.
• Background integrating optical transport/DWDM systems into a broader IP network architecture.

About the company

AST SpaceMobile and its global partners are building the first and only space-based cellular broadband network to be accessible by standard smartphones. The network is designed to provide connectivity at 4G/5G speeds everywhere on the planet.