Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Internet Engineer

🎯 Role Definition

The Internet Engineer is responsible for designing, implementing, operating, and optimizing carrier-grade network infrastructure that powers internet-facing services, transit and peering, and customer connectivity. This role focuses on routing (BGP/OSPF), transport (MPLS, DWDM, Ethernet), traffic engineering, security (DDoS mitigation and edge controls), and automation of network operations across on-premises and cloud environments. The ideal candidate combines deep packet, protocol, and transport knowledge with automation, telemetry, and cross-functional collaboration skills to deliver resilient, high-performance internet services at scale.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Network Operations Center (NOC) Technician
Network Engineer (Routing & Switching)
Systems Engineer with networking responsibilities

Advancement To:

Senior Internet Engineer / Principal Network Engineer
Network Architect (Internet / Backbone)
Engineering Manager (Network Services)

Lateral Moves:

Cloud Network Engineer (AWS/GCP/Azure)
Peering & Interconnect Engineer
Traffic Engineering / CDN Operations Lead

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Design, deploy, and operate large-scale carrier and enterprise internet backbone networks, including multi-homed BGP edge architectures, inter-site transit, peering fabrics, and IX peering configurations to maximize redundancy and minimize latency across PoPs.
Configure, tune, and maintain BGP sessions (eBGP and iBGP), route policies, route reflection, communities, and prefix-lists to support transit, peering, and customer routing while preventing route leaks and ensuring route stability.
Implement and manage transport technologies such as MPLS, TE/LDP, EVPN-VXLAN, and Ethernet-based WANs to provide scalable L2/L3 connectivity, traffic separation, and service-level guarantees for customers and internal services.
Plan and execute capacity forecasting and traffic engineering using traffic telemetry (NetFlow, sFlow, IPFIX) and network performance metrics to prevent congestion and optimize path selection across the backbone.
Design and operate DDoS mitigation strategies and edge protection, including scrubbing, rate-limiting, blackholing, ingress/egress filtering (uRPF), and integration with commercial or in-house DDoS mitigation platforms.
Build and maintain high-availability PoP architectures using redundant routers, switches, and optical transport, documenting failover scenarios and ensuring predictable behavior under link or device failure.
Lead peering and interconnect negotiations and implementation with IXPs, content providers, CDNs, and transit providers; maintain peering policies, IX memberships, and bilateral agreements to optimize cost and latency.
Implement IPv4 and IPv6 addressing, routing, and transition strategies (dual-stack, NAT64, BGP4+) to support global reachability and compliance with modern network standards.
Deploy and manage optical and transport equipment (DWDM, OTN, muxponders) in collaboration with vendors and carriers to provision high-capacity links between core sites and partners.
Troubleshoot complex network incidents including BGP route instability, packet-loss events, and application-affecting latency by performing root-cause analysis and coordinating remediation with cross-functional teams.
Automate network provisioning, configuration drift detection, and change management workflows using Python, Ansible, SaltStack, or similar automation frameworks and integrate with CI/CD pipelines for network changes.
Integrate network telemetry and state collection using gNMI/gRPC, SNMPv3, streaming telemetry, Prometheus, or other observability tools to enable real-time monitoring and rapid incident response.
Author and maintain comprehensive runbooks, escalation processes, network diagrams, and configuration standards to ensure consistent operations and enable on-call teams to resolve incidents efficiently.
Plan and execute migrations and network upgrades (OS upgrades, design changes, hardware refreshes) with rollback strategies, test plans, and clear communication to stakeholders to minimize customer impact.
Collaborate with security teams to implement firewalling, NAT, IPsec/DMVPN, and segmentation controls for customer networks and internal services, and participate in vulnerability remediation and patching schedules.
Support cloud connectivity solutions including Direct Connect, Interconnect, Transit Gateway, and cloud-native networking constructs, designing hybrid WAN architectures that span on-prem and cloud.
Participate in capacity planning and procurement decisions for routers, switches, transponders, and optics by evaluating performance, licensing, and lifecycle costs in vendor RFPs and PO processes.
Conduct performance tuning and TCP/IP stack optimization for critical internet-facing services and customer circuits to improve throughput and minimize retransmissions.
Coordinate with support, product, and engineering teams to onboard new customers, define SLAs, and deliver customized connectivity solutions (L2 VPNs, L3 VPNs, dedicated internet access).
Build scripts and tools for log parsing, alerting, and ticket automation; integrate monitoring outputs into incident management systems (PagerDuty, VictorOps) and ITSM platforms (ServiceNow).
Validate and test disaster recovery and business continuity plans for network services, including simulated failover exercises and post-mortems with mitigation actions.
Maintain compliance with regulatory and routing best practices (RPKI, ROA, BGP origin validation) and contribute to organizational policy on prefix announcements and route acceptance.
Mentor junior engineers, review peer configurations and changes, and promote knowledge sharing through training sessions, brown-bags, and documentation.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
Assist sales and presales teams with technical proposals, solution diagrams, and feasibility assessments for prospective customers.
Provide on-call support rotation for network incidents, coordinate escalations, and communicate outage status to stakeholders and customers.
Participate in post-incident reviews and continuous improvement efforts to reduce MTTR and recurring incidents.
Engage with vendors for bug escalation, feature requests, and tracking hardware/software lifecycle issues.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

BGP (eBGP/iBGP) design and policy implementation, including route filtering, communities, route-maps, and route-reflection.
Advanced knowledge of routing protocols: OSPF, IS-IS, and dynamic MPLS technologies (LDP, RSVP-TE).
MPLS, EVPN, VXLAN, and L2/L3 VPN provisioning and troubleshooting.
IPv4 and IPv6 address planning, dual-stack operations, and transition strategies.
WAN technologies: DWDM, optical transport, Ethernet, Carrier Ethernet, and SD-WAN architectures.
Network automation and orchestration using Python, Ansible, Terraform, or equivalent IaC tools.
Network monitoring, telemetry, and observability: NetFlow/sFlow/IPFIX, SNMP, Prometheus, Grafana, and ELK stack.
Vendor platform experience: Cisco IOS/XR/NX-OS, Juniper JunOS, Arista EOS, and familiarity with merchant silicon devices.
Firewalling, VPNs (IPsec, TLS), edge security controls, and DDoS mitigation techniques and platforms.
Cloud networking: AWS Direct Connect, Azure ExpressRoute, Google Cloud Interconnect, Transit Gateway design.
Traffic engineering and capacity planning using traffic analysis tools and telemetry.
Scripting and tool development for operational efficiency (Bash, Python, API-driven automation).
Experience with peering, IXPs, CDN interconnects, and peering policy management.
Familiarity with RPKI, ROA, BGP origin validation, and routing security best practices.
Knowledge of CI/CD for network (Git, code review, automated testing for configurations).

Soft Skills

Clear and concise written and verbal communication for runbooks, incident updates, and stakeholder briefings.
Strong troubleshooting mindset and analytical problem-solving with attention to detail.
Ability to prioritize work under pressure and manage concurrent incidents and projects.
Cross-functional collaboration with product, security, cloud, and NOC teams.
Mentorship and knowledge transfer capabilities to coach junior engineers.
Customer-facing presence for technical discussions, onboarding, and SLAs.
Proactive ownership and strong decision-making in ambiguous operational environments.
Time management, organization, and documentation discipline.
Continuous learning mindset to keep pace with evolving internet technologies.
Vendor and partner management skills for negotiations and technical escalations.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Telecommunications, Information Technology, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

Master's degree in Network Engineering, Computer Science, or related technical field.
Industry certifications (CCNA/CCNP/CCIE, JNCIA/JNCIS/JNCIP, CompTIA Network+, or equivalent).

Relevant Fields of Study:

Computer Science
Electrical / Telecommunications Engineering
Network Engineering
Information Systems

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

3–7 years of progressive experience in network engineering or internet-facing network operations.
For senior/principal roles: 7+ years with demonstrated backbone, peering, and transport ownership.

Preferred:

Prior experience in ISP, CDN, cloud provider, or large-scale carrier network.
Demonstrable track record of automating network operations and building telemetry-driven observability.
Hands-on experience with multi-vendor environments, peering negotiations, and large-scale routing design.