Principal Engineer

Verisign helps enable the security, stability, and resiliency of the internet. We are a trusted provider of internet infrastructure services for the networked world and deliver unmatched performance in domain name system (DNS) services.

We are a mission focused, values driven company where each individual can contribute to building a stronger, more secure internet. We offer a dynamic and flexible work environment with competitive benefits and the ability to grow your career.

The Principal Engineer is responsible for developing, managing, and optimizing the organization’s global Internet interconnection strategy. This role oversees settlement-free peering, paid peering, IP transit, Internet Exchange (IX) participation, traffic engineering, routing policy, and strategic relationships with network operators, content providers, cloud providers, carriers, and Regional Internet Registries (RIRs).

The ideal candidate possesses strong technical networking expertise, business negotiation skills, and industry engagement experience to improve network performance, reduce transit costs, increase resiliency, and support the company’s global connectivity objectives.

Responsibilities:

Interconnection Strategy

Develop and execute the global peering and interconnection strategy

Identify opportunities to expand peering relationships and optimize transit utilization

Drive network growth through strategic partnerships with ISPs, cloud providers, content networks, CDNs, carriers, and hyperscalers

Evaluate new IX opportunities and regional expansion initiatives

Establish KPIs for traffic offload, cost reduction, latency improvements, and resiliency

Peering Management

Negotiate and manage:

Settlement-Free Peering

Bilateral Peering

Multilateral Peering

Public Peering

Private Peering

Maintain peering policies and qualification requirements

Manage relationships through:

PeeringDB

IX communities

Industry forums

Network operator groups

Coordinate onboarding and operational support for new peers

Resolve peering disputes, routing issues, and traffic imbalances

Internet Exchange (IX) Operations

Manage participation across global Internet Exchanges

Evaluate IX performance and ROI

Coordinate provisioning of:

Cross-connects

Port upgrades

New exchange deployments

Develop business cases for new IX expansion

Maintain relationships with IX operators and executive leadership

IP Transit Management

Manage global transit providers and carrier relationships

Conduct transit capacity planning

Negotiate contracts and pricing

Evaluate transit performance and redundancy requirements

Develop strategies to reduce transit costs through increased peering

Monitor traffic shifts between transit and peering environments

Routing & Traffic Engineering

Define and maintain routing policies

Optimize traffic flows across:

Peering

Transit

IX fabrics

Private interconnections

Manage traffic engineering initiatives using:

BGP communities

Local Preference

MED

AS Path Prepending

Analyze traffic patterns and forecast growth

Improve latency, packet loss, and path optimization

Industry Engagement

Represent the company at:

NANOG

RIPE

APRICOT

LACNIC

ARIN

APNIC

Global Peering Forum

Build executive-level relationships across the Internet ecosystem

Participate in policy discussions and industry working groups

Monitor industry trends affecting interconnection and Internet governance

Cross-Functional Leaderships

Partner with:

Network Engineering

Infrastructure Operations

Security

Product Management

Legal

Procurement

Finance

Develop executive reporting and dashboards

Present interconnection strategy and performance metrics to senior leadership

Required Technical Expertise

Routing Protocols

BGP-4 (Border Gateway Protocol)

eBGP

iBGP

Route Reflectors

Confederations

BGP Communities

Large Communities

Flowspec

Core Internet Protocols

IPv4

IPv6

ICMP

TCP/IP

UDP

MPLS

Routing Technologies

OSPF

IS-IS

Segment Routing

EVPN

VXLAN

Internet Infrastructure

Internet Exchanges (IX)

Route Servers

Route Collectors

CDN Architectures

Anycast

DNS Infrastructure

DDoS Mitigation Architectures

Content Delivery Networks

Routing Security

RPKI

ROA Validation

ASPA

BGPsec

MANRS

IRR Databases

Route Filtering

Prefix Filtering