Technical Lead Network Engineer, Physical Infrastructure

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Role Description

As a Tech Lead for Physical Infrastructure, you will drive the technical strategy and architecture behind Dropbox's global datacenter, network, hardware, and automation systems. You will play a crucial role in areas such as network engineering and automation, datacenter architecture, infrastructure reliability, and large-scale systems design.

In this role, you will define the next generation of Dropbox's physical infrastructure—ensuring it is scalable, automated, cost-efficient, and ready to support storage, compute, and AI workloads. You will influence multi-year roadmaps, lead complex cross-team initiatives, and partner closely with senior engineering, operations, and product leaders across the company.

This is a high-visibility technical leadership position where you will guide architectural decisions, mentor engineers, and improve the operational resilience of the systems powering hundreds of millions of users. You'll gain substantial senior leadership exposure, influence Dropbox's long-range infrastructure strategy, and help shape one of the most critical parts of our platform.

Responsibilities

Lead technical strategy and architecture across network engineering, network automation, datacenter engineering, hardware engineering, and physical operations.

Design and drive large-scale infrastructure automation systems that improve reliability, reduce manual work, and streamline configuration, deployment, and telemetry pipelines.

Guide multi-quarter, cross-functional initiatives spanning cloud infrastructure, datacenter buildouts, and network modernization efforts.

Serve as the senior technical escalation point for complex infrastructure challenges, including large-scale design decisions and high-severity production incidents.

Partner with Infra SWE, SRE, Capacity Planning, Security, and Operations to ensure Dropbox infrastructure remains reliable, scalable, and cost-efficient.

Mentor engineers across multiple disciplines, raising the technical bar through design reviews, architectural frameworks, and best practices.

Drive continuous improvement in operational resilience, system reliability, and infrastructure efficiency.

Many teams at Dropbox run Services with on-call rotations, which entails being available for calls during both core and non-core business hours. If a team has an on-call rotation, all engineers on the team are expected to participate in the rotation as part of their employment. Applicants are encouraged to ask for more details of the rotations to which the applicant is applying.

Requirements

12+ years of experience in large-scale infrastructure engineering, including network engineering, distributed systems, or network automation.

Proven experience designing and operating production networks (datacenter fabric, backbone routing, traffic engineering, reliability architecture).

Strong technical background in infrastructure automation (configuration management, deployment pipelines, orchestration frameworks, telemetry systems).

Demonstrated ability to lead multi-team technical initiatives, influencing architectural direction and driving cross-functional alignment.

Experience diagnosing and resolving complex infrastructure issues, including participation in high-severity incident management.

Effective communication and collaboration skills, with experience working across engineering, operations, and leadership teams.

Ability to mentor engineers, drive technical standards, and improve engineering quality across multiple domains.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience designing or operating datacenter mechanical, electrical, or capacity systems.

Background in hardware lifecycle management, server/switch qualification, or vendor evaluation.

Experience developing backend or distributed systems supporting infrastructure automation or orchestration.

Prior leadership in multi-region infrastructure buildouts or modernization programs.

Advanced expertise in network architecture (underlay/overlay fabrics, BGP/EVPN, routing policy, failure domain design).

Compensation

US Zone 1

This role is not available in Zone 1 US Zone 2 $212,700—$287,700 USD US Zone 3 $189,000—$255,800 USD

The range(s) listed above is the expected annual salary/OTE (On-Target Earnings) for this role, subject to change.

Please note, OTE are for sales roles only.

Salary/OTE is just one component of Dropbox's total rewards package. All regular employees are also eligible for the corporate bonus program or a sales incentive (target included in OTE) as well as stock in the form of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs).

Dropbox takes a number of factors into