Principal Specialist Internet Optimisation

Optus is an Australian telecommunications company, delivering more than 11 million services to our customers every day across mobile, broadband and digital solutions.

We’re looking for a Principal Technical Specialist, Internet Optimisation to join our Design and Optimisation team, based in Macquarie Park, Sydney. As the senior technical authority for Internet-facing network services, you’ll shape the performance, efficiency, resilience and engineering evolution of Optus’s Internet network.

Working as a senior individual contributor, you’ll turn Internet traffic behaviour, customer experience signals and network telemetry into clear engineering decisions. You’ll define optimisation strategy, shape routing and interconnection policy, guide capacity and resilience investments, and lead the resolution of the most complex Internet performance issues across architecture, operations, security, product, commercial teams, vendors and external partners.

What You’ll Do

• Define and maintain the Internet optimisation strategy, technical roadmap, architecture principles and measurable performance outcomes across Internet Core, peering, transit, edge routing, DNS, DDoS protection, CDN and content interconnection.
• Own and evolve BGP routing policy, traffic engineering principles, route hygiene and inter-domain routing controls across multi-homed Internet environments, including peering, transit, IXP presence, private interconnects, failover and capacity distribution.
• Correlate network telemetry, active measurements, flow data, service KPIs and customer experience indicators to diagnose latency, packet loss, throughput, DNS, CDN, gaming, streaming, cloud access and international connectivity issues.
• Act as the principal design authority for novel, high-risk or cross-domain Internet optimisation decisions, governing reference designs, standards, decision records and technical guardrails for routing, interconnection, DNS, DDoS and observability.
• Drive model-driven, API-first automation, telemetry, data models, dashboards and analytical tooling that improve policy validation, compliance, change assurance and the speed of technical diagnosis.
• Provide principal-level leadership during major Internet incidents and cross-provider faults, leading evidence-based root cause analysis, systemic improvement, reusable troubleshooting playbooks and knowledge transfer across engineering and operations teams.

What makes you perfect for the role?

• A Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or a related discipline, a postgraduate qualification or expert-level certification such as CCIE or JNCIE are highly regarded.
• Extensive experience, typically 15+ years, in large-scale IP or Internet network engineering, with recognised depth in Internet architecture, optimisation and operational troubleshooting within a carrier, hyperscaler, content network, major enterprise or technology vendor environment.
• Expert-level knowledge of BGP, routing policy, communities, convergence, route reflectors, multipath, filtering, multi-homed design, peering, transit, IXPs, private interconnects, edge routing, Internet Core, anycast, RPKI and routing security.
• Advanced capability in analysing latency, loss, jitter, throughput, congestion, utilisation, flow telemetry and active measurements, with strong understanding of TCP, QUIC, DNS, CDN, caching, cloud connectivity and application-path dependencies.
• Practical experience with network automation and observability using APIs, Netconf/YANG, Ansible, streaming telemetry, SNMP, NetFlow/IPFIX, logs, synthetic testing and event correlation, together with scripting or data analysis using Python, SQL or equivalent.
• Industry credibility and the ability to lead through expertise without formal authority, with strong executive communication, commercial awareness, sound judgement, stakeholder influence, mentoring and cross-company collaboration skills.

The good stuff…

• Competitive remuneration and employee discounts.
• Make life easier (and more affordable) with $80 monthly credit and 25% off Optus products and unique shopping discounts with our retail partners.
• Flexible working arrangements with opportunities to work three days in the office, two days remote or home.
• Vibrant and collaborative office campus that includes cafes, convenience store, chill out zones, GP, post office, gym and on-site childcare centre.
• Competitive leave policies, including additional ‘Connected’ days to focus on culture, family, health, community, or whatever’s important to you.
• We support growing families with inclusive, carer-neutral paid Parental Leave of up to 16 weeks.
• Build meaningful connections through employee-led networks and diversity initiatives including Culture Connect, Elevate Women, Disability Network and Express Yourself (LGBTQIA+).
• Put your wellbeing first with free access to counselling and support services, 24/7 — in-person, by phone, SMS, or video.
• Free Optus bus from Macquarie University Metro Station (every 6-8 minutes); morning and afternoon.

At Optus, we are strengthened by others and that means valuing diversity and saying ‘yes’ to embracing individual differences.

We are committed to ensuring that our application process provides an equal employment opportunity to all job seekers, including individuals from diverse gender, cultural and linguistic backgrounds, individuals with a disability, individuals identifying as being part of the LGBTQIA+ community, individuals who may have served in the armed forces or who identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander.

We also want to do our best to make our recruitment process inclusive.

If you require any adjustments or accessibility support to participate fairly and equitably in the recruitment process, please email accessiblerecruitment@optus.com.au or call 1800 309 170.

For more information on Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging at Optus, please visit https://www.optus.com.au/about/inclusion-diversity