Senior Director, Network Development

Senior Director Network Development

The Senior Director Network Development will lead engineering teams responsible for the operational excellence, reliability, and continuous improvement of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s global physical network. Reporting to the Vice President of Engineering, this leader will play a critical role in ensuring OCI’s datacenter and backbone networks operate at hyperscale with the resiliency, performance, security, and availability required by Oracle’s cloud customers.

This is a senior technology leadership role requiring deep physical networking expertise, strong operational judgment, hyperscale infrastructure experience, and the ability to lead globally distributed teams. The Senior Director will be responsible for driving network operations, production readiness, incident response, change management, observability, capacity health, lifecycle management, and continuous service improvement across OCI’s global network footprint.

The role spans physical network operations, backbone and transport reliability, interconnection readiness, hardware lifecycle execution, automation, monitoring, capacity planning, vendor coordination, and operational governance. This leader will work closely with Architecture, Product, Operations, SRE, Security, Data Center, Supply Chain, and executive stakeholders to ensure OCI delivers secure, reliable, high-performance connectivity for enterprise, AI, HPC, multicloud, and cloud‑native workloads.

Responsibilities

Network Design, Development, and Validation

• Define and govern multi-year architecture and design standards across cloud, data center, WAN, and edge; ensure designs meet resilience, security, and compliance objectives.
• Sponsor transformational programs (SDN/intent-based networking, zero‑trust segmentation) and enforce design reviews, configuration baselines, and lifecycle policies across regions.
• Establish enterprise validation strategy for new architectures, hardware/firmware, and software at scale; require pre-production proofs, pilot rollouts, and rollback plans.
• Align network roadmap with product and platform strategies; balance innovation with reliability, cost, and regulatory constraints.

Automation and Scripting

• Set group strategy for network automation frameworks, pipelines, and “policy as code”; standardize reusable modules, guardrails, and CI/CD for network changes.
• Prioritize automation investments that reduce toil, increase change velocity, and improve MTTR; track benefits through measurable KPIs and error budget adherence.
• Ensure secure-by-design automation practices, including access controls, audit trails, and compliance checkpoints; drive adoption across all regions and teams in the group.

Testing and Quality Assurance

• Own group-wide test strategy and acceptance criteria for configurations, images, and changes; mandate automated regression, canary/blue‑green rollouts, and production‑safety checks.
• Institutionalize quality gates and change readiness reviews; ensure RCAs and corrective actions are integrated into test plans and playbooks.
• Run governance forums to assess test coverage, defect escape, and reliability risk; direct group-wide corrective and preventive action priorities and timelines.

Monitoring and Reliability

• Define network health strategy, SLOs, SLIs, and error budgets across services and regions; enforce consistent telemetry, alerting, and runbook standards.
• Lead executive-level incident management for high‑severity events; enforce consistent RCA quality, cross‑org learnings, and durable remediation at scale.
• Drive resiliency investments (redundancy, fault isolation, DR exercises); validate business continuity and recovery outcomes against policy and regulatory needs.

Cross-Team Collaboration and Leadership

• Align network strategy with Cloud/Infra, SRE, Security, Product, and Finance; chair architecture and change boards to manage dependencies and risks.
• Build leadership capacity through coaching, succession planning, and inclusive practices; set clear expectations for managers and technical leaders.
• Own strategic vendor relationships and contract negotiations; drive joint roadmaps, performance SLAs, and remediation plans for systemic issues.

Performance and Capacity Management

• Govern capacity planning and forecasting models to meet growth, launches, and expansion; tie plans to budget cycles and supply constraints.
• Set performance targets (latency, jitter, packet loss, throughput) and optimization strategies; eliminate hotspots via routing policy, peering, placement, and traffic engineering.
• Balance cost, performance, and resiliency trade-offs; implement continuous cost optimization and value tracking for network investments.

Core Responsibilities

• Planning & Execution : Provide strategic oversight on the management and execution of large-scale projects or initiatives, monitoring timelines, deliverables, and budgets to ensure success. Set strategies for delegating work, setting priorities, and aligning projects with business needs. Drive the strategic planning process across teams, providing guidance on resources or timelines in anticipation of changes.
• Collaboration & Partnership : Set a strategic direction for collaborating with cross-functional teams to ensure alignment of expectations and strategic objectives. Drive a culture of teamwork, empowering teams to build and maintain partnerships with business leaders, stakeholders, and customers to contribute to organizational success. Promote a culture of transparency and inclusivity where all voices are valued and respected.
• Problem Solving : Develop and implement strategies for advanced problem‑solving across the organization, serving as an escalation point for highly complex operational and technical issues. Oversee teams leveraging innovative techniques to address significant ambiguous issues, identify root causes, and prevent recurrence.
• Continuous Learning : Champion continuous learning to maintain cutting‑edge skills and influence organizational best practices. Inspire teams to build and maintain expertise in relevant areas by proactively monitoring emerging trends, technologies, and industry standards to help position the organization as an industry leader.
• Continuous Improvement : Drive a culture of continuous improvement that sets a standard for efficient and effective processes, protocols, and workflows across the organization. Oversee work to implement large-scale approaches and methods for continued improvement, ensuring changes align with organizational goals.
• Performance and Development : Drive and ensure consistent application of performance management strategies, systems, processes, and guidelines across the organization. Create a culture of career development that encourages proactively identifying and pursuing career development opportunities, and guide leaders to support their team’s growth.

Qualifications

Disclaimer: Certain U.S. based or U.S. customer‑facing roles may be required to comply with applicable requirements, such as immunization/occupational health mandates, and/or drug testing requirements.

Range and benefit information provided in this posting are specific to the stated locations only.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, including expert medical opinion
• Short term disability and long term disability
• Life insurance and AD&D
• Supplemental life insurance (Employee/Spouse/Child)
• Health care and dependent care Flexible Spending Accounts
• Pre-tax commuter and parking benefits
• 401(k) Savings and Investment Plan with company match
• Paid time off and sick leave policies, paid parental leave, and adoption assistance
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Financial planning and group legal
• Voluntary benefits including auto, homeowner and pet insurance

Career Level - M5

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