Distinguished Engineer - Networking

Distinguished Engineer Position

At GEICO, we offer a rewarding career where your ambitions are met with endless possibilities. Every day we honor our iconic brand by offering quality coverage to millions of customers and being there when they need us most. We thrive through relentless innovation to exceed our customers' expectations while making a real impact for our company through our shared purpose. When you join our company, we want you to feel valued, supported and proud to work here. That's why we offer The GEICO Pledge: Great Company, Great Culture, Great Rewards and Great Careers.

GEICO is seeking an experienced Distinguished Engineer with a passion for building high-performance, low maintenance, zero-downtime platforms, and applications. You will help drive our insurance business transformation as we transition from a traditional IT model to a tech organization with engineering excellence as its mission, while co-creating the culture of psychological safety and continuous improvement.

Position Description

As our Distinguished Engineer, you will work with our Manager and Engineers to innovate and build new systems, improve, and enhance existing systems and identify new opportunities to apply your knowledge to solve critical problems. You will lead the execution of a technical roadmap that will increase the velocity of delivering products and unlock new engineering capabilities. The ideal candidate has a deep understanding of technology, risk management, site reliability engineering principles and planning to design and implement resilient systems that safeguard our business from potential threats.

Position Responsibilities

As a Distinguished Engineer, you will:

• Provide thought leadership in datacenter reliability for networks and servers, staying ahead of industry trends and emerging technologies
• Conduct comprehensive risk assessments to identify potential threats and vulnerabilities
• Design and implement robust strategies to ensure maintainability and observability of our hardware and operating system assets
• Lead the design and architecture of resilient and scalable systems, considering both on-premises and cloud-based solutions
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate GEICO best practices into the development and deployment processes
• Develop and maintain comprehensive incident response plans to address various disaster scenarios on our networking and datacenters.
• Conduct regular simulations and drills to ensure the readiness of the organization in the event of a disaster
• Hands-on software engineering and SDLC best practices (Technical Review Documents, Architecture, Software Development, Software Reviews, Testing, Production Readiness Reviews, among others)
• Evaluate, select, and implement cutting-edge technologies and tools to enhance our datacenter capabilities including but not limited to processes, compliance, and visibility
• Stay current with industry best practices and emerging technologies to continuously improve our network and datacenter capabilities
• Work closely with executive leadership, IT teams, and other stakeholders to communicate the importance of networks and datacenters and foster a culture of resilience
• Act as a trusted advisor, providing guidance on network, hardware and datacenter best practices to technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Be a role model and mentor, helping to coach and strengthen the technical expertise and know-how of our engineering and product community
• Analyze cost and forecast, incorporating them into business plans
• Determine and support resource requirements, evaluate operational processes, measure outcomes to ensure desired results, and demonstrate adaptability and sponsoring continuous learning

Qualifications

Fluency and specialization in software development and best practices using programming languages such as Golang and Python. Understanding of datacenter and LAN/WAN network designs with a focus on underlay networks and physical infrastructure. Understanding of operating systems and how they interface with hardware. Understanding of datacenter facilities, lifecycle and urbanization. Understanding of SQL and NoSQL databases, including stateful services management and storage. Understanding of networking, caches, key/value stores, load balancing, global load balancing, queues, DNS and CDN. Primary Focus on managing infrastructure through code. Deep knowledge of SRE practices, methodologies, and principles, along with a solid understanding of on-prem and public cloud-based network, compute, and storage technologies. In-depth knowledge of hybrid cloud architecture, IaaS and PaaS technologies, container orchestration platforms (e.g., Kubernetes), cloud efficiency and observability etc. Strong background in incident management. Ability to create incident response playbooks, runbooks, incident triaging strategies, and post-incident analysis to drive continuous improvement in system reliability and availability. Experience with open-source management and monitoring tools. Experience with infrastructure automation, tooling, and configuration management frameworks (e.g., Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Pulumi, Terraform, etc.) Familiarity with cloud security best practices and compliance standards. Excellent leadership skills with a passion for mentoring and fostering professional growth. Detail-oriented and a drive for operational excellence. Visionary thinker with the ability to anticipate future challenges and opportunities. Excellent communication skills. Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities.

12+ years of professional software development experience 10+ years of experience with architecture and design 6+ years of experience with AWS, GCP, Azure, or another cloud service 6+ years of experience in open-source frameworks Bachelor's degree in computer science, Information Systems, or equivalent education or work experience.

$130,000.00 - $300,000.00 The above annual salary range is a general guideline. Multiple factors are taken into consideration to arrive at the final hourly rate/ annual salary to be offered to the selected candidate. Factors include, but are not limited to, the scope and responsibilities of the role, the selected candidate's work experience, education and training, the work location as well as market and business considerations.

At this time, GEICO will not sponsor a new applicant for employment authorization for this position.

The GEICO Pledge:

Great Company: At GEICO, we help our customers through life's twists and turns. Our mission is to protect people when they need it most and we're constantly evolving to stay ahead of their needs.

We're an iconic brand that thrives on innovation, exceeding our customers' expectations and enabling our collective success. From day one, you'll take on exciting challenges that help you grow and collaborate with dynamic teams who want to make a positive impact on people's lives.

Great Careers: We offer a career where you can learn, grow, and thrive through personalized development programs, created with your career and your potential in mind. You'll have access to industry leading training, certification assistance, career mentorship and coaching with supportive leaders at all levels.

Great Culture: We foster an inclusive culture of shared success, rooted in integrity, a bias for action and a winning mindset. Grounded by our core values, we have an established culture of caring, inclusion, and belonging, that values different perspectives. Our teams are led by dynamic, multi-faceted teams led by supportive leaders, driven by performance excellence and unified under a shared purpose.

As part of our culture, we also offer employee engagement and recognition programs that reward the positive impact our work makes on the lives of our customers.

Great Rewards: We offer compensation and benefits built to enhance your physical well-being, mental and emotional health and financial future.

• Comprehensive Total Rewards program that offers personalized coverage tailor-made for you and your family's overall well-being.
• Financial benefits including market-competitive compensation; a 401K savings plan vested from day one that offers a 6% match; performance and recognition-based incentives; and tuition assistance.
• Access to additional benefits like mental healthcare as well as fertility and adoption assistance.
• Supports flexibility- We provide workplace flexibility as well as our GEICO Flex program, which offers the ability to work from anywhere in the US for up to four weeks per year.

The equal employment opportunity policy of the GEICO Companies provides for a fair and equal employment opportunity for all associates and job applicants regardless of race, color, religious creed, national origin, ancestry, age, gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, familial status, disability or genetic information, in compliance with applicable federal, state and local law. GEICO hires and promotes individuals solely on the basis of their qualifications for the job to be filled.

GEICO reasonably accommodates qualified individuals with disabilities to enable them to receive equal employment opportunity and/or perform the essential functions of the job, unless the accommodation would impose an undue hardship to the Company. This applies to all applicants and associates. GEICO also provides a work environment in which each associate is able to be productive and work to the best of their ability. We do not condone or tolerate an atmosphere of intimidation or harassment. We expect and require the cooperation of all associates in maintaining an atmosphere free from discrimination and harassment with mutual respect by and for all associates and applicants.