Principal Network Engineer – Cape Town (Full‑time)

About the role

Ambit Connect, a well‑established ISP in Cape Town, is looking for a Principal Network Engineer with over 10 years of experience. The role provides technical leadership, architectural ownership, and strategic direction for a growing network infrastructure serving both corporate and residential customers.

Key responsibilities

• Own the technical architecture for ISP core, aggregation, access, wireless, peering, transit and customer‑edge environments.
• Design, govern and optimise carrier‑grade routing using BGP, OSPF, iBGP/eBGP, route filtering and traffic engineering.
• Establish network monitoring, telemetry and capacity reporting, and drive proactive optimisation.
• Define and enforce network security architecture, including firewalls, VPNs and DDoS mitigation.
• Lead major incident resolution, root‑cause analysis and post‑incident improvement.

Required profile

• 10+ years of networking experience, with at least 8 years at senior L3/L4 level.
• Based in Cape Town (or willing to relocate at personal cost) and hold a valid driver’s licence and own car.
• South African citizenship required.

Required skills

• BGP, OSPF, iBGP/eBGP routing protocols.
• MPLS, VLAN, VXLAN, L2/L3 VPN, QoS, OTN.
• Network monitoring, telemetry and capacity planning.
• Network security, firewalls, VPNs, DDoS mitigation.
• IP address management and IPv6 strategy.