Sr. Manager of Network Engineering

Job Title: Sr. Manager of Network Engineering

Location: Chicago IL 60605/ New York City, NY -- 4 days onsite, 1 day remote

Perm/FTE role

Job Summary

Onsite 4x per week in Chicago or NYC

Our challenge is finding folks with direct HFT experience. THIS IS A MUST HAVE

This role is a technical management position. It involves translating business and technical requirements, assessing level of effort, removing blockers, supporting incident management and root-cause analysis, and guiding the team

Job Description

• The Sr. Manager of Network Engineering is a senior technical leader responsible for leading a high-performing network engineering team that designs, builds, and operates the low-latency infrastructure supporting global financial exchange platforms. This role sits at the intersection of hands-on technical depth and strategic execution, ensuring the network consistently meets the performance, reliability, and determinism required for global markets.
• Network directly underpins market integrity and fairness, requiring expert-level understanding of low-latency architecture, routing design, and the practical limitations of network hardware and software platforms. This is not a generalist leadership role—technical credibility and the ability to guide engineers through complex, research-driven design and implementation work is essential. The Sr. Manager is expected to operate independently, own outcomes end-to-end, and align engineering efforts to key business and market initiatives with a strong “make it happen” mindset.
• The team is responsible for a broad and evolving network footprint, including low-latency trading infrastructure, global WAN/MPLS, hybrid cloud connectivity, remote office networking, network authentication, packet capture and timestamping systems, and automation tooling. The Sr. Manager works closely with Network Operations and Security teams to provide escalation support, drive resolution of complex issues, and ensure seamless collaboration across infrastructure domains.
• Success in this role requires the ability to lead in a fast-paced, highly dynamic environment with shifting priorities and parallel workstreams. The Sr. Manager serves as a technical authority, mentor, and decision-maker—setting direction, establishing best practices, and driving execution across both strategic projects and day-to-day operations. Strong communication skills are critical, including the ability to clearly articulate technical risks, trade-offs, and priorities to senior leadership while maintaining alignment across engineering teams.

Your responsibilities will be:

• Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing network engineering team, fostering technical excellence, strong accountability, and disciplined engineering practices across a global, multi-region environment
• Drive strategic network initiatives from concept through execution, including pre-implementation research, design validation, vendor evaluation, and production deployment, ensuring high-quality delivery and strong execution discipline
• Own the architecture and long-term evolution of low-latency trading network infrastructure, guiding design decisions around topology, routing, performance optimization, and scalability in environments where latency and determinism are critical
• Partner closely with senior technical contributors, including Principal Engineers, to lead complex design efforts, validate architectural decisions, and raise the overall technical bar of the organization
• Manage a dynamic project portfolio, continuously reprioritizing work based on business needs, market events, and operational risk while maintaining alignment to key strategic initiatives
• Collaborate across infrastructure, security, cloud, and application teams to deliver integrated solutions, ensuring reliable, secure, and high-performance connectivity across all environments
• Establish and enforce strong operational practices, including structured change management, validation procedures, incident response expectations, and post-implementation review processes
• Support and influence network automation strategy, encouraging scalable, maintainable approaches using Python and API-driven tooling to improve efficiency and reduce operational friction
• Oversee vendor relationships and hardware/software evaluation efforts, including participation in RFPs, proof-of-concept testing, and critical design reviews, ensuring informed technology decisions
• Serve as a senior escalation point for complex network issues, leading high-impact troubleshooting efforts and ensuring timely resolution across engineering and operations teams
• Contribute to budgeting and capacity planning for network infrastructure, aligning investments with performance requirements and business growth
• Define and maintain engineering standards, architecture documentation, and technical processes, including contributions to regulatory-facing documentation where required
• Operate effectively in a fast-paced, evolving environment, balancing long-term architectural direction with immediate operational priorities and driving a strong “make it happen” execution mindset

The ideal candidate has

• 10+ years of progressive network engineering experience in low-latency, mission-critical environments, with at least 3 years in a leadership or management capacity
• Deep expertise in low-latency network design and optimization, with a strong understanding of switching behavior, buffering, and techniques required to achieve deterministic performance at scale
• Advanced knowledge of Layer 2 and Layer 3 protocols, including BGP, OSPF, MPLS, VXLAN, multicast (PIM-SM), and resilient traffic engineering across global networks
• Proven ability to design, scale, and operate complex, highly available network infrastructure in environments where performance and reliability are critical to the business
• Strong track record of leading and developing engineering teams, including mentoring senior engineers, driving technical standards, and building a high-performance, accountable culture
• Experience leading large, complex projects from research and design through implementation, with disciplined execution and strong operational rigor
• Hands-on experience with network automation using Python and API-driven approaches to improve efficiency, consistency, and scalability
• Solid understanding of network security principles, including segmentation, access control, and secure design practices within enterprise and trading network environments
• Experience managing competing priorities in a fast-paced, dynamic environment, with the ability to align engineering work to business needs and drive execution under pressure
• Strong communication and leadership presence, with the ability to clearly articulate technical strategy, risks, and trade-offs to both engineering teams and senior leadership
• Experience working with distributed teams and partnering across infrastructure, security, and application organizations
• Familiarity contributing to architecture standards, technical documentation, and, where applicable, materials supporting regulatory or audit requirements

Preferred certifications:

• Cisco CCIE (Routing & Switching or Data Center) or equivalent expert-level experience
• Arista, Juniper, or other advanced networking certifications (preferred)

A reasonable, good faith The anticipated base pay compensation range for this position is $200,000 to $225,000

Benefits: Full time employees are eligible For Health Insurance, Paid Time Off, and 401k match

* The pay range listed above reflects the expected starting salary /Pay rate for this role. This range may be adjusted based on market conditions, location, and other relevant factors. The Company will determine the final starting salary/Pay rate in consultation with the selected candidate(s), in full compliance with applicable laws