Staff Network Engineer (Menlo Park, CA)

Our mission is to detect cancer early, when it can be cured. We are working to change the trajectory of cancer mortality and bring stakeholders together to adopt innovative, safe, and effective technologies that can transform cancer care.

We are a healthcare company, pioneering new technologies to advance early cancer detection. We have built a multi-disciplinary organization of scientists, engineers, and physicians and we are using the power of next-generation sequencing (NGS), population-scale clinical studies, and state-of-the-art computer science and data science to overcome one of medicine's greatest challenges.

GRAIL is headquartered in the bay area of California, with locations in Washington, D.C., North Carolina, and the United Kingdom. It is supported by leading global investors and pharmaceutical, technology, and healthcare companies.

For more information, please visit grail.com

As a Staff Network Engineer at GRAIL, you will be a hands-on technical leader responsible for building, operating, and evolving our cloud and hybrid network infrastructure. You'll spend a significant portion of your time designing, implementing, and troubleshooting secure, scalable, and highly available network solutions in AWS (centered on Amazon VPC), while also owning critical on-prem and data center networking (Juniper/Aruba) and Palo Alto firewalls.

You will both execute (design, configure, implement, monitor, and debug) and provide architectural leadership, standards, and mentorship across teams. A key part of the role includes robust monitoring, logging, dashboarding, and capacity planning to ensure reliable, predictable network performance.

This is a hybrid role based in Menlo Park, CA (moving to Sunnyvale, CA in Fall 2026) . Our current flexible work arrangement policy requires that a minimum of 80%, or 32 hours, of your total work week be on-site for this role. Your specific schedule, determined in collaboration with your manager, will align with team and business needs and could exceed the 60% requirement for the site.

Responsibilities

• Staff Network Engineering - AWS and Hybrid Cloud
• AWS VPC Engineering
• Design, build, and maintain Amazon VPCs including CIDR planning, subnet design (public/private), route tables, Internet Gateways (IGW), NAT gateways, and VPC endpoints (Interface/Gateway).
• Configure and manage security controls such as Security Groups, NACLs, AWS Network Firewall, and AWS WAF for defense-in-depth across environments.
• Hybrid Connectivity
• Implement and support hybrid connectivity using AWS Direct Connect, Site-to-Site VPNs, and AWS Transit Gateway for scalable VPC-to-VPC and on-prem connectivity.
• Traffic Management & DNS
• Configure Amazon Route 53 for internal and external DNS, routing policies, health checks, and failover.
• Deploy and manage Elastic Load Balancing (ALB/NLB/GLB) to provide high availability, SSL termination, path-based routing, and/or TCP/UDP load balancing.
• On-Prem & Data Center Networking
• Operate and troubleshoot on-prem and data center networks using Juniper and Aruba platforms (switching, routing, VLANs, VRFs, BGP/OSPF).
• Configure, manage, and tune Palo Alto Networks firewalls, including security policies, NAT, VPN, and content inspection.
• Monitoring, Logging & Dashboards
• Design and implement end-to-end monitoring, alerting, and dashboards for network health, performance, and security, leveraging tools such as:
• VPC Flow Logs, CloudWatch metrics/logs, and Route 53 health checks.
• Firewall logs and on-prem device telemetry.
• Build and maintain dashboards for:
• Link utilization, latency, packet loss, and error rates (DX, VPN, TGW, campus links).
• Load balancer health, connection metrics, and capacity.
• DNS performance and resolution issues.
• Establish actionable alerting thresholds and runbooks to support rapid incident triage and resolution.
• Capacity Planning & Performance
• Perform ongoing capacity planning for AWS networking (VPCs, TGW, DX, VPN, load balancers) and on-prem links, forecasting growth and identifying bottlenecks.
• Analyze traffic patterns and utilization data to right-size connectivity, optimize routing, and plan upgrades before they become constraints.
• Run performance tests and baselines (throughput, latency, failover behavior) and tune configurations accordingly.
• Incident Response & Troubleshooting
• Lead network-related incident response, including real-time troubleshooting across layers (DNS, TCP/IP, TLS, internal app protocols).
• Drive root-cause analysis (RCA) and implement corrective and preventive actions (runbooks, automation, design changes).
• Architecture & Design (Significant Component)
• Own end-to-end network architecture for multi-account, multi-region AWS environments, ensuring scalability, reliability, observability, and security.
• Develop and maintain network reference architectures and patterns for:
• Isolated and regulated environments.
• Service-to-service connectivity using PrivateLink, VPC peering, and/or VPC Lattice.
• Ingress/egress patterns through ELB, Global Accelerator, and centralized egress VPCs.
• Design application connectivity, segmentation, and zero-trust network patterns in partnership with Security and Platform teams.
• Evaluate and introduce advanced AWS networking capabilities (e.g., AWS App Mesh, Amazon VPC Lattice, AWS Global Accelerator) where they provide clear operational or performance benefits.
• Ensure architectural designs explicitly include observability and capacity planning requirements (telemetry, KPIs, SLOs).
• Automation, Tooling & Governance
• Build and maintain infrastructure-as-code for network components (e.g., Terraform/CloudFormation modules for VPCs, TGWs, Direct Connect, routing, firewall rules).
• Integrate network provisioning and configuration into CI/CD pipelines to support safe, auditable, and repeatable deployments.
• Automate generation and updates of network monitoring, logging, and dashboard configurations where possible.
• Define and codify network standards, guardrails, and best practices for AWS and on-prem networking, including monitoring and capacity baselines.
• Partner with Security and Compliance to ensure designs and implementations meet regulatory and internal policy requirements, including logging and retention requirements.
• Collaboration & Leadership
• Act as the primary subject matter expert for AWS networking, hybrid connectivity, and network observability, providing guidance to platform, SRE, security, and application teams.
• Mentor other engineers on networking fundamentals, AWS networking, performance troubleshooting, and effective monitoring/dashboards.
• Lead and review technical designs, RFCs, and architectural decisions for network-related projects.
• Communicate complex networking concepts, trade-offs, and capacity risks to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• These responsibilities summarize the role's primary responsibilities and are not an exhaustive list. They may change at the company's discretion.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in network engineering, with at least several years in a senior/staff or architecture-oriented role.
• Deep, hands-on experience with AWS networking:
• Amazon VPC (CIDR design, subnets, IGW/NAT, route tables, endpoints).
• Security Groups and NACLs.
• AWS Transit Gateway, Site-to-Site VPN, and AWS Direct Connect.
• Route 53 and ELB (ALB/NLB/GLB).
• Strong enterprise/data center networking experience:
• Juniper and/or Aruba networking platforms.
• Routing/switching (BGP, OSPF, VLANs, VRFs, link aggregation, redundancy protocols).
• Hands-on experience with Palo Alto Networks firewalls (policy management, NAT, VPN, content inspection).
• Demonstrated experience setting up monitoring, logging, and dashboards for network infrastructure (cloud and on-prem), and using this data for incident response and capacity planning.
• Proven track record building and operating secure, highly available, and scalable network infrastructures in production.
• Solid understanding of network security principles, segmentation, and zero-trust concepts.
• Strong troubleshooting skills across layers (DNS, TCP/IP, TLS, internal app protocols).
• Infrastructure as Code: Hands-on experience using Terraform or CloudFormation to design and implement network infrastructure via Infrastructure as Code. Must be comfortable owning both the architecture and the corresponding automation (coding depth beyond basic scripting required).
• Excellent communication skills and experience working in cross-functional, fast-moving environments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in healthcare, life sciences, or other highly regulated or security-sensitive environments.
• Experience with:
• AWS Network Firewall, AWS WAF.
• AWS App Mesh and/or Amazon VPC Lattice.
• AWS Global Accelerator and edge networking patterns.
• Proficiency with infrastructure-as-code (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation) and automation/scripting (Python, Bash, PowerShell, etc.).
• Experience designing SLOs, KPIs, and alerting strategies for network reliability and performance.
• Familiarity with SD-WAN, SASE, and/or Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solutions.
• Relevant certifications such as AWS Certified Advanced Networking - Specialty, CCNP/CCIE, or Palo Alto Networks certifications.

Expected full time annual base pay scale for the Menlo Park / Sunnyvale, CA area is $135K-$179K. Actual base pay will consider skills, experience and location.


This role may be eligible for other forms of compensation, including an annual bonus and/or incentives, subject to the terms of the applicable plans and Company discretion. This range reflects a good-faith estimate of the range that the Company reasonably expects to pay for the position upon hire; the actual compensation offered may vary depending on factors such as the candidate's qualifications. Employees in this role are also eligible for GRAIL's comprehensive and competitive benefits package, offered in accordance with our applicable plans and policies. This package currently includes flexible time-off or vacation; a 401(k) retirement plan with employer match; medical, dental, and vision coverage; and carefully selected mindfulness programs.

GRAIL is an equal employment opportunity employer, and we are committed to building a workplace where every individual can thrive, contribute, and grow. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, status as a protected veteran, , or any other class or characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, and local laws. Additionally, GRAIL will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records in a manner consistent with applicable law and provide reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. Please contact us at [email protected] if you require an accommodation to apply for an open position.

GRAIL maintains a drug-free workplace. We welcome job-seekers from all backgrounds to join us!