Principal Engineer - Network, WAN, LAN & Cloud Edge

Wells Fargo is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead the strategy, architecture, and delivery of enterprise WAN and LAN connectivity services. This role is responsible for end-to-end lifecycle ownership, including planning, solution development, design, configuration, and integration of next-generation network technologies.

The scope includes, but is not limited to, LAN and WAN architectures, MPLS and VPN connectivity, SD-WAN, SD-Access, WLAN, third-party connectivity, and voice services. The engineer will define and drive the strategic roadmap for Wells Fargo’s global network infrastructure, ensuring alignment with business priorities across corporate and external sites in both domestic and international locations.

In this role, the engineer will evaluate and recommend modern network technologies and architectures to enhance scalability, resilience, and operational efficiency, while aligning solutions with Secure by Design principles.

This position sits within the Innovation and Transformation team in Secure Network Services , part of the Cyber Security organization .

Key Responsibilities

• Established network technology strategies and roadmaps that align network services with business needs and infrastructure priorities.
• Provide strategic network engineering guidance for critical non-network infrastructure and business efforts.
• Develop and obtain project approval and funding. Identify stake holders and form project teams and leads. Conduct pilot and recommend go/no go decision based on defined success criteria.
• Identify emerging/new products and technologies required to support new business request (requiring new features) or to fill gaps with current deployed network technologies.
• Lead efforts to test and evaluate IT vendor products. Recommend vendor and product selections, and new network architecture for building sites in the United States and international locations.
• Establish success criteria for Develop and participate in Proof of concepts (POC) at vendor sites for new products and services.
• Troubleshoot and resolve the most complex network issues.
• Provide expert level network design and debugging services to development teams. Work closely with project managers and developers to implement reliable, manageable, and secure solutions for external connections.
• Identify network performance issues, interpret trends, and network traffic patterns, provide traffic analysis, and implement improvements.
• Assist with strategic capacity planning efforts for adopting new technologies.
• Facilitate network traffic, security, systems monitoring and related discussions with IT and business managers.
• Train and mentor staff. Conduct formal training sessions, one-on-one sessions, and recommend training vendors.
• Identify opportunities to automate manual system tasks.
• Thoroughly understand and comply with IT policies and procedures, especially those for quality and productivity standards that enable the team to meet established client service levels. Thoroughly understand and comply with Information Security policies and procedures.
• Research and document industry best practices and trends.
• Participate in special projects and perform other related duties as assigned

Required Qualifications:

• 7+ years of Network WAN (wide area network) and LAN (Local Area Network) connectivity services experience or combination of the following: work experience, training, military experience, education
• 5+ years of technical design experience.
• 5+ years of network or network security design experience.

Desired Qualifications:

• CCIE or equivalent preferred.
• Expert knowledge of enterprise networks (L2/L3, BGP/EVPN, DC fabrics, SD-WAN, SASE, firewalls, LB, DNS/DHCP/IPAM), cloud networking (Azure/AWS/GCP: VNet/VPC, Transit, Direct Connect/ExpressRoute) and routing protocols (e.g., OSPF, and BGP).
• Expert knowledge in configuring and operating Cisco Routers and switches including ISR, ASR, and Catalyst platforms.
• Hands-on experience with Cisco Meraki or Fortinet Secure SD-WAN.
• Experience with telemetry & tooling: SNMP, NetFlow/IPFIX/sFlow, syslog, streaming telemetry (gNMI/NETCONF/RESTCONF), synthetic monitoring, path analytics, and topology.
• Automation and integration skills: Python, Ansible, Terraform, CI/CD, REST APIs, webhooks, event pipelines.
• Strong grasp of SRE principles (SLIs/SLOs/error budgets), reliability and resilience (RTO/RPO, DR, chaos en…