Network Engineering Manager

IREN is an AI Cloud provider building and operating data centers and GPU clusters. The Network Engineering Manager (AI HPC) leads and develops the US network engineering team and is accountable for delivering high-performance networks for AI data center builds across US sites.

Responsibilities:

• Lead, coach and develop a team of around 12 network engineers. Hold regular 1:1s, set clear goals, and give honest, timely feedback
• Own hiring for the US team: work with leadership on headcount and the right mix of levels, run structured interviews and technical assessments, and close strong candidates
• Build a learning culture through design reviews, peer review of configurations and code, blameless post-incident reviews, internal knowledge sharing, and support for vendor training and certification
• Plan team capacity across concurrent builds and operational work. Balance workload, travel and on-call so the pace is sustainable, and cross-train so no site or skill depends on one person
• Own network delivery for our US AI data center builds, from design and bill of materials through installation, cabling, configuration, validation and handover, against agreed capacity dates
• Work with technical program managers, construction, electrical, data center operations and vendors on schedules, rack layouts, cabling plans and readiness. Raise risks early, with options
• Set and hold standards for change control, documentation, acceptance testing and handover to operations
• Report on delivery and team health, for example build progress against plan, acceptance test results, incident trends, automation coverage, hiring and retention

Requirements:

• 10+ years in network engineering, including at least 3 years directly managing engineers (hiring, performance reviews and career development)
• A track record of developing engineers: people you have hired, coached and promoted, and teams that learned to deliver without you in the detail
• Experience growing a technical team through hiring: defining roles, running structured interviews and technical assessments, and onboarding new starters
• Deep hands-on background in large-scale data center networks, including Layer 2/3 (VLANs, VXLAN, BGP EVPN, OSPF, IS-IS) and Clos/ECMP fabric design, enough to review designs and coach senior engineers
• Experience delivering network builds for new data centers or major expansions against fixed dates, working with construction, electrical and operations teams
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including explaining technical risk and trade-offs to non-network stakeholders and senior leaders
• Strong ownership mindset and a great attitude
• AI/HPC networking: NVIDIA InfiniBand, Spectrum-X and RoCEv2 (PFC, ECN, lossless fabric tuning), with an understanding of NVLink/NVSwitch
• Network hardware and operating systems: NVIDIA, Arista, Cisco, Dell and Fortinet; Cumulus Linux, SONiC, NX-OS and EOS
• Network automation and infrastructure as code (Python, Ansible, Terraform, Git/GitLab CI), including leading a team's move from manual to automated provisioning and validation
• Fiber and optical infrastructure (single-mode/multimode, DWDM/CWDM) and structured cabling at scale
• Industry certifications (e.g., CCIE, JNCIE or NVIDIA networking), or a history of supporting engineers through them
• Develops people deliberately: enjoys seeing others grow, and makes time for coaching even when delivery is busy
• Gives direct, specific feedback and deals with performance issues early and fairly
• Holds a high technical bar and applies it consistently in hiring, design reviews and change control
• Prefers repeatable systems (standards, runbooks, automation) to individual heroics
• Collaborative across teams and time zones, including our global network engineering team
• Based in the US