Network Engineer

The Opportunity

You'll own the network infrastructure that connects Nascent's trading systems to exchanges, colocations, and internal platforms - the physical and logical fabric that every microsecond of execution depends on. This is a hands-on build-and-operate role: you'll design low-latency network topologies, manage colocation cross-connects and exchange connectivity, maintain precision time synchronization, and keep firewall and routing policy tight. You'll work alongside systems engineers, SREs, and quant infrastructure teams who treat deterministic performance as a first-class engineering discipline.

This isn't a ticket-queue seat inside a large NOC. You'll be one of two network engineers with direct ownership over architecture decisions, vendor relationships, and the tooling you build to monitor and automate the stack - designing connectivity from scratch, not just maintaining what someone else built. The problems are real: packet captures at the switch port, PTP drift investigations, firewall policy reviews that directly affect trade flow - and you'll have the autonomy to solve them end to end. This position must be geographically located within +/- 3 hours EST.


Responsibilities

• Own colocation connectivity: cross-connects, exchange feeds, and carrier relationships across production colo facilities.
• Design and maintain low-latency L2/L3 network topologies for trading infrastructure.
• Configure, troubleshoot, and optimize BGP and OSPF routing in production.
• Maintain precision time synchronization (PTP / IEEE 1588) across trading and infrastructure systems.
• Manage firewall policy (Cisco ASA, Palo Alto, or equivalent) - changes that directly affect production traffic paths.
• Write Python tooling for network automation, configuration management, and operational monitoring.
• Perform packet capture and protocol-level troubleshooting (tcpdump, Wireshark).
• Build and maintain runbooks, network diagrams, and infrastructure documentation.
• Participate in the on-call rotation and own incidents end to end, from triage through post-mortem.

About you

• You've worked in latency-sensitive, colocation, or trading environments - you understand why microseconds matter and how network decisions land on execution.
• You design infrastructure from scratch rather than only operating what someone else built.
• You script your way out of repetitive work; automation is instinct, not an afterthought.
• You own incidents end to end - you don't escalate and wait, you dig in until it's resolved.
• You're comfortable as one of two network engineers: small team, real ownership, nowhere to hide.
• You treat on-call as part of the craft, not an imposition.
• You translate network decisions into language systems engineers, SREs, and quant teams can act on.

Preferred experience

• 3+ years hands-on with L2/L3 networking in latency-sensitive, colocation, or trading environments.
• Strong working knowledge of BGP and OSPF - configuration, troubleshooting, and design in production.
• Production experience with PTP (IEEE 1588) or comparable precision time synchronization.
• Proficiency in Python for network automation, configuration management, or operational tooling.
• Hands-on firewall configuration and management (Cisco ASA, Palo Alto, or equivalent).
• Packet capture and protocol-level troubleshooting (tcpdump, Wireshark).
• Nice to have: CCNP/CCIE with practical work behind it; IaC for network config (Ansible, Terraform); hybrid-cloud connectivity (AWS Direct Connect, Azure ExpressRoute); DPDK or kernel-bypass exposure.

About Nascent

Founded in 2020, Nascent exists to build, expand, and capture opportunity, in open markets and permissionless technologies. Building from a base of permanent capital, we deploy assets across a range of both liquid and long-term strategies that ensure we are among the most active users of the open financial system we are helping to build. We've backed 100+ early-stage teams that we believe can change markets and expand what's possible. At Nascent, we combine that venture + market pedigree with product-grade engineering to turn research into revenue: experiments that ship fast, are evaluated rigorously, and move P&L. We focus on models, low-latency infrastructure, and resilient systems that compound performance over time.

Our Team & Culture

We're an interdisciplinary team of engineers, quants, and operators who treat skill-building like a sport. The culture is competition + curiosity: push to win, share learnings, and iterate publicly through red-teams, internal games, and post-mortems. Autonomy isn't a perk - it's how we ship.

Principles that drive our team & work

• Compete to win
• Explore, experiment, play
• Always be building
• Seek and speak truth
• Own your shit.

What We Offer

• The opportunity to learn, experiment and build in an entrepreneurial environment
• Remote-first, distributed team with frequent in-person sprints and retreats.
• Competitive total comp with strong bonus upside tied to performance.
• Hardware & home-office stipend, conference and learning budgets.
• Comprehensive health benefits (medical/dental/vision), life insurance.
• Open vacation policy as well as flexible work hours and location
• 16 weeks fully-paid parental leave + supported return to work.
• Retirement matching, open vacation policy, flexible hours.

We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome diverse perspectives.