Principal Network Engineer - SDWAN
Keyloop
IT
Hyderabad, Telangana, India
The Principal Network Engineer will be a senior individual contributor (IC4) within Keyloop's Network Engineering team, based in Hyderabad, India. This role provides deep technical ownership of Keyloop’s global corporate network infrastructure — spanning SD-WAN, cloud security, wireless, and VPN — while playing a critical part in growing and developing the network engineering capability within the Hyderabad location.
Working closely with the Network Engineering Manager, this individual is the primary corporate network authority for Keyloop's India operations, providing mentoring and technical development to both the local Network Engineering team and the Hyderabad IT Support team. The role also involves supporting legacy voice decommissioning and migration to modern unified communications platforms.
Roles & Responsiblities
- Design, implement, and maintain Keyloop's global corporate network infrastructure, ensuring high availability, performance, and security across all office and hub sites.
- Own the architecture and ongoing optimisation of corporate SD-WAN deployments, connecting Keyloop’s office locations and enabling secure corporate connectivity.
- Administer and evolve Keyloop’s switching, wireless, and security appliance estate across the global corporate office footprint.
- Manage and maintain corporate VPN solutions for Keyloop’s ~2,775 users across 29 countries.
- Lead the design and implementation of network changes and projects, maintaining full documentation including topology diagrams, IP address management (IPAM), and configuration standards.
- Implement and enforce network security controls, working in close partnership with the Information Security team and the organisation’s cloud network security and secure web proxy platform.
- Maintain working knowledge of Keyloop’s cloud network security and secure web proxy platform — how internet and private access policies are structured and enforced — sufficient to support troubleshooting and act as an informed partner to the Information Security team.
- Stay current with the organisation’s cloud security posture to identify and flag network-layer issues affecting policy effectiveness or user connectivity, escalating to the relevant owner as appropriate.
- Apply Zero Trust principles and network segmentation thinking to corporate network design, ensuring access controls, traffic isolation, and least-privilege connectivity are treated as standard practice.
- Support the assessment and decommissioning of legacy voice systems across Keyloop’s global estate, contributing technical input to the decommissioning roadmap.
- Assist in the technical delivery of migrations from legacy voice platforms to modern unified cloud communications solutions, providing hands-on support and technical expertise as required.
- Serve as the senior technical point of reference and informal people lead for the Hyderabad Network Engineering team, providing day-to-day guidance, technical mentorship, and career development support.
- Own a structured networking skills development programme for the Hyderabad IT Support team — delivering training sessions, shadowing opportunities, and competency assessments covering network fundamentals, fault diagnosis, escalation, and documentation standards.
- Contribute to the development of standard operating procedures, runbooks, and training materials for the wider IT team.
- Maintain a skills matrix for the IT Support team’s networking capability, tracking progress against competency levels, identifying individuals with potential to move into network engineering roles, and reporting outcomes to the Network Engineering Manager regularly.
- Evolve, develop and monitor network performance across the global estate, responding to incidents and proactively resolving issues before they impact service.
- Manage corporate network-related incidents and problems in the ITSM platform, ensuring tickets are accurately categorised, prioritised, and resolved within SLA.
- Identify gaps and inefficiencies in network processes and infrastructure, proposing improvements with a pragmatic, cost-conscious approach.
- Provide out-of-hours support as required, including on-call coverage for critical network incidents.
- Stay current with emerging networking technologies and vendor roadmaps, making recommendations where upgrades or changes would benefit Keyloop.
- Manage relationships with network hardware and equipment vendors — switching, wireless, and SD-WAN providers — ensuring Keyloop receives appropriate support, holds current licensing, and stays informed of relevant roadmap developments.
- Oversee third-party contractors engaged for network delivery or project work, defining scope, reviewing output quality, and ensuring delivery to Keyloop’s standards and timelines.
- Contribute technical input to procurement and renewal processes for network hardware and services, including vendor selection, RFQs, and contract reviews.
Network Infrastructure & Architecture
Cloud Network Security & Secure Access
Legacy Voice & Unified Communications Migration
Team Development, People Leadership & Mentoring
Operations & Continuous Improvement
Vendor Management
Skillsets & experience required:
- Proven experience in corporate network engineering within internal enterprise environments, with a track record of delivering across complex, multi-site global organisations.
- Deep expertise in enterprise SD-WAN technologies; ability to design, deploy, and optimise SD-WAN overlays.
- Extensive experience with enterprise switching, wireless access points, and security appliances, including centralised cloud-managed network platforms.
- Familiarity with cloud network security and secure web proxy solutions (SSE/SASE or equivalent), sufficient to troubleshoot connectivity issues and work effectively alongside an Information Security team.
- Solid experience with VPN technologies, including site-to-site and remote access solutions.
- Demonstrated experience with legacy and cloud voice systems (PBX/on-premise telephony), including SIP/ISDN circuits and troubleshooting issues with codexs.
- Experience in delivery of voice migration projects to cloud or UCaaS platforms.
- Comprehensive knowledge of networking fundamentals: TCP/IP, routing (BGP, OSPF), switching (VLANs, STP), DNS, DHCP/IPAM, and wireless protocols.
- Demonstrated experience mentoring and developing junior engineers, with the ability to act as an informal people lead — supporting career development conversations and driving team capability growth.
- Strong documentation skills — network diagrams, change records, and runbooks.
- Excellent problem-solving capability and composure under pressure.
- Relevant industry certifications in enterprise networking, wireless, or security (vendor or vendor-neutral).
- Experience working in a global IT organisation with a distributed, multicultural team.
- Familiarity with cloud-based unified communications platforms and UCaaS migration experience.
- Exposure to network security frameworks and working alongside Information Security functions.
- ITILv4 Foundation or above.
- Hands-on experience with one or more cloud network security or SSE/SASE platforms.
- Prior experience in a formal or informal people-lead, team-lead, or deputy role; or demonstrated appetite to grow into formal line management responsibility.
- Experience designing or delivering structured technical training or upskilling programmes for non-specialist teams (e.g. service desk, helpdesk, or desktop support).
Essential
Desirable