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# Principal Network Engineer - remote across UK or Ireland

- **Company:** Ocho People
- **Location:** Belfast, United Kingdom (Remote available)
- **Experience:** Expert
- **Salary:** £90,000 - £110,000
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Artificial Intelligence, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Border Gateway Protocol, Cloud Computing, Data Centers, Cursor, HAProxy, Python (Programming Language), Routing, Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Overlay Transport Virtualization, PCI Data Security Standards, Ansible, Service Discovery, Software Engineering, Policy as Code, Network Routers, Load Balancing, Claude Code, Firewalls (Computer Science), Juniper, Agentic-AI, Git, Production Code, Hashicorp, Cloudflare, Drift Detection, Firewall Services Module, Terraform, Open Network Automation Platform, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Splunk, Software Version Control, Cisco
- **Published:** October 30, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.adzuna.co.uk/jobs/details/5946063160

## About the Role

* Extensive experience as a principal or lead network engineer in production enterprise environments
 * Expert routing and switching: BGP, OSPF, VXLAN/EVPN, plus networking in AWS, Azure, OCI or GCP
 * Firewall policy and segmentation in regulated environments, ideally PCI DSS and SOX
 * Proven network automation with Terraform, Ansible, vendor APIs and a network source of truth
 * Production-quality code in Python, Go or similar, using Git, pull requests and CI, not just procedural scripts
 * Daily use of agentic coding tools such as Claude Code, Codex or Cursor, with a safety-first approach to reviewing agent output
 * Clear writing and the confidence to explain design trade-offs and make the case for new approaches

Nice to Have

 * Palo Alto (including Panorama), Juniper and Cisco
 * HAProxy Enterprise, HashiCorp Consul, NetBox, Cloudflare and Splunk
 * Experience designing or reviewing MCP servers for AI agents

## Description

We're looking for a Principal Network Engineer to be the most senior technical lead for network engineering at a global payments technology company. You'll set direction for the whole network across data centres and public cloud, and turn it into automated, self-service capabilities that engineers use without raising a ticket. Success is measured by the requests that no longer need to be made.

This is a hands-on role for a network engineer who has made the move to automation and software engineering. You'll write code every week, use AI tools daily and work autonomously in a fully remote team across the US and Europe., * Keep the network's intended state in source control, managing switches, routers, firewalls and cloud networking through Terraform, Ansible and vendor APIs, with automated validation before any production change

 * Build self-service capabilities with policy checks and guardrails for common requests such as network segments, VPCs, firewall rules and private connectivity
 * Design Palo Alto segmentation and firewall policy as code, keeping PCI DSS cardholder data scope tight
 * Design and evolve routing and switching (BGP, VXLAN/EVPN) across data centres and cloud interconnects
 * Provide load balancing and traffic steering as code, integrated with service discovery
 * Build PCI DSS and SOX controls into the network, with automated backups, drift detection and audit evidence
 * Ship every capability with telemetry, flow data and alerting, and run what you build, including on-call and failover testing
 * Mentor senior engineers and lead the most significant designs and build-versus-buy decisions