Network Planning & Design Manager

Lambda

Job details

  • REMOTE
  • FULL_TIME
  • San Francisco
  • United States
  • Verified 2026-10-09
  • Salary: USD 196,000–290,000/yr
  • Source: Lambda public Ashby board

Original job description

Lambda, The Superintelligence Cloud, is a leader in AI cloud infrastructure serving tens of thousands of customers. Our customers range from AI researchers to enterprises and hyperscalers. Lambda's mission is to make compute as ubiquitous as electricity and give everyone the power of superintelligence. One person, one GPU.

If you'd like to build the world's best AI cloud, join us.

*Note: This position requires presence in our San Francisco or Bellevue office location 4 days per week; Lambda’s designated work from home day is currently Tuesday.

About the Role

Design the connectivity behind Lambda’s next data center, backbone route and customer interconnect. You’ll work directly with carrier engineers and equipment partners to turn capacity, latency and resilience requirements into infrastructure we can build.

Our customers are building AI training and inference systems that depend on moving data to and between compute sites. Your decisions about routes, carrier reach and future capacity will help determine how that network grows.

This is a technical individual contributor role on the Network Planning and Delivery team within Cloud and AI Networking. You’ll take designs through Network Engineering approval and stay involved as our Delivery Managers and suppliers put them into service. You’ll see your designs become working infrastructure and help set the standards for what we build next.

What You’ll Do

Design the Network

  • 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’s and HPC architecture.

  • Compare dark fiber, wavelength, internet transit and interconnection options on latency, resilience, total cost, delivery time and room for expansion.

  • Validate route diversity and identify shared conduits, building entrances, fiber extensions and other dependencies that could compromise a design.

Develop Solutions with Suppliers

  • 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.

  • Give Supply Chain a defined technical scope for negotiations and contracting, including supplier assumptions and unresolved risks.

Take Designs into Delivery

  • Produce a complete design package for Network Engineering approval, then work with Delivery on the build schedule, 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

  • 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.

We Are Looking for Someone Who Is

  • Curious enough to investigate how a proposed route will work in the field.

  • Comfortable making a recommendation, explaining the assumptions and revising it when the facts change.

  • Motivated by seeing your designs built and improving how the next project gets done.

Salary Range Information

The annual salary range for this position has been set based on market data and other factors. However, a salary higher or lower than this range may be appropriate for a candidate whose qualifications differ meaningfully from those listed in the job description.

About Lambda

  • Founded in 2012, with 500+ employees, and growing fast

  • Our investors notably include TWG Global, US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT), Andra Capital, SGW, Andrej Karpathy, ARK Invest, Fincadia Advisors, G Squared, In-Q-Tel (IQT), KHK & Partners, NVIDIA, Pegatron, Supermicro, Wistron, Wiwynn, Gradient Ventures, Mercato Partners, SVB, 1517, and Crescent Cove

  • We have research papers accepted at top machine learning and graphics conferences, including NeurIPS, ICCV, SIGGRAPH, and TOG

  • Our values are publicly available: https://lambda.ai/careers

  • We offer generous cash & equity compensation

  • Health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your dependents

  • Wellness and commuter stipends for select roles

  • 401k Plan with 2% company match (USA employees)

  • Flexible paid time off plan that we all actually use

Equal Opportunity Employer

Lambda is an Equal Opportunity employer. Applicants are considered without regard to race, color, religion, creed, national origin, age, sex, gender, marital status, sexual orientation and identity, genetic information, veteran status, citizenship, or any other factors prohibited by local, state, or federal law.

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