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Lambda, a leader in AI cloud infrastructure serving tens of thousands of customers from AI researchers to enterprises and hyperscalers, is seeking a Network Planning & Design Manager to design the connectivity infrastructure behind Lambda's next data centers, backbone routes, and customer interconnects.
In this technical individual contributor role on the Network Planning and Delivery team within Cloud and AI Networking, you will work directly with carrier engineers and equipment partners to translate capacity, latency, and resilience requirements into buildable infrastructure. Your decisions about routes, carrier reach, and future capacity will directly impact how Lambda's network grows to support customers building AI training and inference systems.
Key Responsibilities:
- Develop physical and optical connectivity designs for data centers, points of presence, backbone routes, and customer interconnects.
- Translate customer and network requirements into routes, capacity plans, equipment needs, and acceptance criteria, working within Network Engineering and HPC architecture constraints.
- Compare dark fiber, wavelength, internet transit, and interconnection options on latency, resilience, total cost, delivery time, and expansion capacity.
- Validate route diversity and identify shared conduits, building entrances, fiber extensions, and other dependencies that could compromise designs.
- Work with carrier engineering teams to develop routes, extend reach, and resolve coverage, site access, or capacity constraints.
- Evaluate new and existing suppliers, gather technical proposals and budgetary quotes, and recommend options with clear tradeoffs.
- Work with optical and network equipment partners on alternatives when fiber availability, equipment lead times, or cost put a build at risk.
- Provide Supply Chain with defined technical scope for negotiations and contracting, including supplier assumptions and unresolved risks.
- Produce complete design packages for Network Engineering approval, then work with Delivery on build schedules, dependencies, and acceptance requirements.
- Resolve design questions during delivery and take revisions back through Network Engineering review when site or supplier conditions change.
- Work with Site Selection and network planning on carrier access, backbone capacity, and future expansion before deployment dates are committed.
- Turn lessons from completed projects into reusable designs and standards with Network Engineering.
You will see your designs become working infrastructure and help set the standards for what Lambda builds next. This role requires presence in the San Francisco or Bellevue office 4 days per week, with Tuesday designated as the work-from-home day.
Requirements:
- Experience designing or developing carrier, cloud, or data center connectivity, with designs that have progressed from requirements into delivery.
- Practical knowledge of dark fiber, wavelength services, optical transport, and internet interconnection.
- Ability to assess physical route diversity, equipment dependencies, and capacity needs beyond what a route map alone shows.
- Experience working directly with carrier engineers, colocation providers, or equipment suppliers to solve design constraints.
- Ability to compare supplier options on technical fit, delivery risk, and total cost, and explain your recommendation.
- Clear design documentation that engineering reviewers and delivery teams can use.
Nice to Have:
- Experience designing long-haul optical networks or dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) systems.
- Experience with private cloud connectivity, internet exchanges, or large compute deployments.
- Carrier solutions engineering experience, or familiarity with route mapping and capacity planning tools.
