Senior Network Engineer, Backbone Group - Network Section, Infrastructure Services Department (INSD)

Job Description:

Business Overview

The Technology Platforms Division (TPD) drives the growth of Rakuten's ecosystem by delivering innovative, high-quality technology platforms characterized by integrated control and strategic partnerships.   
Within TPD, the Cloud Platform Supervisory Department (CPSD) develops and manages Rakuten's state-of-the-art cloud platform, empowering global scalability and accelerating innovation across its diverse business units. 

Department Overview

The Infrastructure Services Department (INSD) at Rakuten delivers high-quality data center, network services to all Rakuten Group companies globally.  We empower Rakuten's innovation with a stable, high-performing, secure, and cost-competitive infrastructure.  By proactively addressing challenges and ensuring Rakuten has the infrastructure services it needs to thrive, we enable global business success. 

The Backbone Group is responsible for interconnecting Rakuten’s data centers spread across Japan and to other regional sites across the globe. The team is also responsible for providing connectivity to major public cloud services providers and for deploying robust infrastructure and scalable solutions for connecting Rakuten’s ecosystem to the internet and the rest of the world.

Position:

Why We Hire

We are seeking highly motivated and team-oriented engineers who are passionate to immerse into various network technologies to automate and improve the network integration of our global infrastructure platform.

Position Details

Network Design and Implementation

• Network infrastructure planning, design and implementation spanning data center clusters across Japan.
• Network device deployment, life cycle management and configuration updates.
• Conduct research of emerging/new network technology and develop test cases for PoC testing.
• Perform critical analysis of results including integration of the overall solution to the existing production environment.
• Network standards creation including basic protocol implementation, architecture and network service feature roadmap.
• Develop and maintain network documentation, including diagrams, configurations, and procedures.
• Perform regular network configuration audits for proactive issue identification and resolution.

Network Project Planning and Implementation

• Lead inter-department/cross-company projects and recommend solutions as network SME.
• Plan and design network solutions based on customer request and project requirements.
• Prepare bill of materials (BOM), labor cost estimation and highlight any variance in the budget
• Conduct cost comparison, cost-benefit analysis and contingency planning to ensure alignment with project scope and allotted budget.
• Ensure proper documentation of network solutions and lead knowledge transfer and handover activities.

Network Troubleshooting and Support

• Investigation, troubleshooting and timely implementation of network solutions and workaround.
• Perform root cause analysis of network problems and implementation of preventative measures.
• Lead initiatives to improve early issue detection and prevention.
• Provide on-call support for network emergencies as needed.
• Documentation of common troubleshooting guides, corner-case scenarios and issues inherent to legacy network design.

Team Lead Experience

• Experience leading a team of engineers.
• Mentoring and training junior members.
• Experience leading projects in a multi-cultural environment.
• Share and lead implementation of industry best practices to improve efficiency.
• Lead initiatives to pinpoint challenges and come up with ideas/solution to improve team performance.

Automation(Good To Have)

• Automate repetitive tasks to improve efficiency and reduce errors.
• Develop and maintain automation scripts and tools.
• Automate network tasks using scripting languages and configuration management tools.

Work Environment

Team Structure

• Managers: 7 members.
• Network Engineers: 30+ members.
• Tool Developers: 3 members.
• Project Managers: 2 members.

Most of the members joined as mid-career professionals coming from different sectors and industries. Based in Japan, India, US and EU, members from various countries and regions work and communicate mainly in English. The team is mainly responsible for operating L2/L3 network devices and in addition, we also handle load balancers and servers.

Mandatory Qualifications:

• CCIE/JNCIE or equivalent level knowledge and experience.
• Over 10 years of experience working in a multi-vendor network environment - design, deployment and operation.
• Over 5 years’ experience as a project leader and/or team leader.
• Solid experience in configuring and maintaining networks with large-scale implementation of BGP, OSPF and VXLAN.
• Troubleshooting experience in large-scale network environments running multi-vendor solutions.
• Experience operating firewall and security technologies (e.g., Juniper SRX).
• Minimum conversation level Japanese in addition to proficiency in English.

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience with public cloud networking (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Experience in developing tools for network infrastructure.
• Knowledge and practical experience in one or more programming languages - Python, Java, Ruby, and Bash.

#Engineer #Infrastructureengineer  #Technologyplatformdiv

Languages:

English (Overall - 3 - Advanced), Japanese (Overall - 2 - Intermediate)