Senior Software Engineering Manager

About the role

Lead a geographically distributed team of solutions and test engineers responsible for architecting, validating, and publishing Juniper Validated Designs (JVDs) across AI/ML cluster, data center, DCI, and campus portfolios. Own team delivery, people development, lab and testbed investment, and cross-functional alignment for NPI programs, while remaining technically credible to guide architecture decisions and customer escalations.

Responsibilities

• People Leadership: Manage, hire, and develop a global team of solutions engineers; goal setting, performance reviews, career planning, compensation input; build team autonomy through coaching and mentoring; develop succession pipeline; foster culture of quality ownership, collaboration, continuous learning.
• Program and Delivery Ownership: Own solution validation roadmap and quarterly commitments for NPI programs; plan capacity, prioritize work, manage schedule risk and dependencies; define and report team metrics (release quality, defect escape rate, automation coverage, JVD delivery, escalation turnaround); act as release quality gate.
• Technical Strategy: Set technical direction for AI/ML data center validation (scale-out/scale-up GPU fabrics, RoCEv2, load balancing, congestion control, multi-tenancy, JCT-based performance); guide architecture for EVPN-VXLAN fabrics, DCI, campus/branch solutions; drive automation strategy (Python, Robot Framework) and sponsor reusable frameworks.
• Resources and Budget: Plan and justify lab, GPU, NIC, test equipment investments; manage testbed utilization and capital requests.
• Stakeholder and Customer Engagement: Partner with Product Management, TME, SE, JTAC, development engineering on solution definition, POCs, product strategy; serve as management escalation point for critical customer issues; sponsor white papers, JVDs, customer-facing technical content.

Requirements

• 12+ years in network engineering, solutions validation, or systems test, with 3+ years leading teams (form