Senior Optical Network Engineer II
What You'll Do:
We are building a global optical backbone designed to support infrastructure at massive scale. We are looking for experienced Optical Network Engineers to help design, build, operate, and evolve the optical network that underpins our global IP backbone.
This is a senior engineering role for engineers with deep, hands-on experience designing and operating production optical networks. You will work across the complete optical lifecycle, from dark fiber and photonic engineering through DWDM system design, deployment, capacity expansion, automation, monitoring, and production operations.
You will work closely with IP Backbone Engineering and Network Architecture to ensure that the optical and IP layers are designed together to provide predictable capacity, physical diversity, failure isolation, and resiliency.
We are specifically looking for engineers who understand the underlying optical network, not just how to configure individual platforms.
About the role:
You will help design, build, and operate our global optical backbone.
You will:
- Design, engineer and operate long-haul, metro, and data-center interconnect optical networks.
- Engineer DWDM systems across dark-fiber infrastructure.
- Design optical paths including amplification, regeneration, wavelength planning, spectrum allocation, and optical power budgets.
- Engineer and operate C-band and L-band optical systems.
- Deploy, configure, operate, and troubleshoot Nokia, Ciena and other optical platforms.
- Commission new fiber spans, wavelengths, and optical systems.
- Perform fiber characterization and validate new dark-fiber routes before production deployment.
- Analyze span loss, connector loss, reflectance, dispersion, OSNR, Q-factor/Q-margin, BER, and other optical performance characteristics.
- Troubleshoot complex optical impairments and fiber-related issues using platform telemetry and appropriate optical test equipment.
- Design amplifier chains and understand EDFA and Raman amplification requirements.
- Engineer coherent optical transmission across metro and long-haul networks.
- Plan and execute network capacity expansions.
- Develop standards for optical network architecture, deployment, commissioning, and operations.
- Build monitoring and telemetry that identifies optical degradation before it becomes a production-impacting failure.
- Participate in incident response and root-cause analysis for optical network events.
- Work directly with dark-fiber providers, carriers, data-center operators, and equipment vendors.
- Evaluate and qualify new optical platforms, coherent optics, and photonic technologies.
- Develop automation and tooling that allows the optical network to scale without equivalent growth in manual operational work.
- Mentor other engineers and help establish the technical standards and engineering culture of a new optical networking team.
Who You Are:
This is a senior-level position. Candidates should have significant hands-on experience designing, deploying, and operating large-scale production optical networks.
Required Experience
- Strong hands-on experience with both Ciena and Nokia optical networking platforms.
- Experience should include production deployment, configuration, troubleshooting, software lifecycle, hardware troubleshooting, and operational support—not simply exposure to the platforms.
- Strong experience with dark-fiber networks, including:
- Fiber characterization and acceptance testing.
- Optical loss budgets.
- ILA site design.
- OTDR testing and interpretation.
- Connector and splice loss.
- Reflectance and ORL.
- Chromatic dispersion.
- Polarization-related impairments.
- Fiber types and characteristics.
- Physical route diversity and shared-risk analysis.
- Troubleshooting degraded and failed fiber spans.
- Deep understanding of DWDM and optical transmission technologies, including:
- Coherent optical transmission.
- C-band and L-band systems.
- ROADMs.
- EDFAs and Raman amplification.
- Coherent pluggable optics.
- 400G and 800G optical transmission.
- ZR and ZR+ technologies.
- FEC and pre-/post-FEC performance.
- OSNR and ESNR.
- Q-factor and Q-margin.
- Chromatic dispersion.
- PMD and PDL.
- Optical power management.
- Wavelength and spectrum planning.
- Amplification and regeneration.
- Alien wavelengths and multi-vendor optical environments.
- You should be comfortable taking a proposed dark-fiber route and determining how to turn it into a production optical system.
- Candidates must have significant hands-on experience with optical platforms from both:
- Ciena - such as Waveserver, 6500/RLS, or comparable Ciena photonic and coherent transport platforms.
- Nokia - Nokia optical transport, photonic line systems, coherent optics, or related platforms.
- Experience designing and operating multi-vendor optical environments is highly desirable.
Preferred:
- Experience with IP networking is strongly preferred. You do not need to be an IP routing specialist, but you should understand how large IP backbones consume optical infrastructure and how failures propagate between the optical and IP layers.
- Experience with technologies such as the following is beneficial:
- BGP.
- IS-IS.
- MPLS.
- Segment Routing.
- IP backbone architectures.
- Juniper, Nokia, or similar service-provider routing platforms.
- Experience with Python or another programming language is strongly preferred. Useful experience includes:
- Python.
- REST APIs.
- NETCONF/YANG.
- gNMI.
- OpenConfig.
- Network automation frameworks.
- Configuration generation and validation.
- Git-based engineering workflows.
- Telemetry and time-series monitoring systems.
- You do not need to be a software engineer, but you should be comfortable using software and automation to solve network engineering problems.
What Success Looks Like
Successful engineers on this team will be able to independently take ownership of complex optical engineering problems. That might mean designing a new long-haul dark-fiber route, determining amplification and regeneration requirements, troubleshooting an unexpected Q-margin degradation, analyzing an OTDR trace after a fiber event, commissioning a new DWDM system, automating wavelength deployment, or working with IP Backbone Engineering to determine whether a proposed network design actually provides physical diversity.
Most importantly, you will help us build an optical backbone that can continue scaling while remaining understandable, observable, resilient, and operationally manageable.
Wondering if you're a good fit?
We believe in investing in our people, and value candidates who can bring their own diversified experiences to our teams – even if you aren't a 100% skill or experience match.
Why CoreWeave?
At CoreWeave, we work hard, have fun, and move fast! We're in an exciting stage of hyper-growth that you will not want to miss out on. We're not afraid of a little chaos, and we're constantly learning. Our team cares deeply about how we build our product and how we work together, which is represented through our core values:
- Be Curious at Your Core
- Act Like an Owner
- Empower Employees
- Deliver Best-in-Class Client Experiences
- Achieve More Together
We support and encourage an entrepreneurial outlook and independent thinking. We foster an environment that encourages collaboration and enables the development of innovative solutions to complex problems. As we get set for takeoff, the organization's growth opportunities are constantly expanding. You will be surrounded by some of the best talent in the industry, who will want to learn from you, too. Come join us!
The base salary range for this role is zł321,000 to zł428,000. The starting salary will be determined by job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and the market location. We strive for both market alignment and internal equity when determining compensation. In addition to base salary, our total rewards package includes a discretionary bonus, equity awards, and a comprehensive benefits program (all based on eligibility).
To fulfill our obligation to protect client data, successful applicants offered employment with CoreWeave will be required to complete a basic criminal record check, conducted in compliance with GDPR. Employment offers are conditional upon receiving satisfactory check results.
What We Offer
In addition to a competitive salary, we offer a variety of benefits to support your needs, including:
- Family-level Medical Insurance
- Family-level Dental Insurance
- Generous Pension Contribution
- Life Assurance at 4x Salary
- Critical Illness Cover
- Employee Assistance Programme
- Tuition Reimbursement
- Work culture focused on innovative disruption
Benefits may vary by location.
Equal Opportunity
CoreWeave is an equal opportunity employer, committed to fostering an inclusive and supportive workplace. All qualified applicants and candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran status, or genetic information.
Recruitment Agencies
CoreWeave does not accept speculative CVs. Any unsolicited CVs received will be treated as the property of CoreWeave and your Terms & Conditions associated with the use of CVs will be considered null and void.
Any unsolicited CVs sent by your company to us – that is to say, in any situation where we have not directly engaged your company in writing to supply candidates for a specific vacancy – will be considered by us to be a “free gift”, leaving us liable for no fees whatsoever should we choose to contact the candidate directly and engage the candidate’s services, and will in no way establish any prior claim by your company to representation of that candidate should the candidate’s details also be submitted by any other party.
Export Control Compliance
This position requires access to export controlled information. To conform to U.S. Government export regulations applicable to that information, applicant must either be (A) a U.S. person, defined as a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful permanent resident (green card holder), (iii) refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, (B) eligible to access the export controlled information without a required export authorization, or (C) eligible and reasonably likely to obtain the required export authorization from the applicable U.S. government agency. CoreWeave may, for legitimate business reasons, decline to pursue any export licensing process.
Updated privacy notice - UK and EU Job Applications
When you apply to a job on this site, the personal data contained in your application will be collected by CoreWeave UK Ltd. (“Controller”), which is located at
Phosphor (6th Floor), 133 Park Street, London, SE1 9EA
and can be contacted by emailing [email protected]. Controller’s data protection officer can be contacted at [email protected]. Your personal data will be processed for the purposes of managing Controller’s recruitment related activities, which include setting up and conducting interviews and tests for applicants, evaluating and assessing the results thereto, and as is otherwise needed in the recruitment and hiring processes. Such processing is legally permissible under Art. 6(1)(f) of (i) Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and (ii) the GDPR as it forms part of the laws of the UK (“UK GDPR”), as necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the Controller, which are the solicitation, evaluation, and selection of applicants for employment. Your personal data will be shared with Greenhouse Software, Inc., a cloud services provider located in the United States of America and engaged by Controller to help manage its recruitment and hiring process on Controller’s behalf. With respect to transfers originating from the UK or the European Economic Area ("EEA") to a country outside the UK or the EEA, we implement the appropriate transfer mechanism(s) and other appropriate solutions to address cross-border transfers as required by applicable law. You may request a copy of the suitable mechanisms we have in place by contacting us at [email protected]
Your personal data will be retained by Controller as long as Controller determines it is necessary to evaluate your application for employment. Where permitted by applicable law, we may also retain your personal data for a limited period after the recruitment process ends in order to consider you for future job opportunities, respond to legal claims, or comply with record-keeping obligations. Under the GDPR and the UK GDPR, you have the right to request access to your personal data, to request that your personal data be rectified or erased, and to request that processing of your personal data be restricted. You also have the right to data portability. In addition, you may lodge a complaint with the relevant supervisory authority: (i) A list of Europe’s data protection authorities can be found here; and (ii) for the UK, this is the Information Commissioner's Office.
For additional information, please see our Privacy Policy.
