Director / Senior Director of Engineering - Zero Trust Network Access

Alkira, a Lumen company, is a fast-growing cloud networking company that is transforming the way enterprise networks are deployed and managed. As we continue to reinvent networking for the multi-cloud and AI era, we are expanding our Engineering team.

The Role

We are seeking a Director or Senior Director of Engineering to own Alkira's Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) product end to end: the client, the control and management planes, and the team that builds them. You will set the long-term direction, build for scale and security, and deliver results that grow revenue and protect margins. The level will be based on experience and depth of expertise.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role. The technology underneath ZTNA has changed before and will change again, and we want a leader who takes on hard problems and is willing to rethink foundational choices.

Location: This position is a hybrid role and requires onsite collaboration with the team at our San Jose, CA office 2 - 3 times during the week

Responsibilities

• Own the long-term vision, architecture, and roadmap for ZTNA, and lead transitions in core technologies such as tunneling, transport, and identity as the product evolves.

• Design for scale from the start: customer growth, concurrent users, global distribution, and high availability.
• Hire, develop, and lead engineers and managers.
• Build for scale: tenant growth, concurrent users, global distribution, and high availability.

• Apply zero-trust and secure-by-design principles throughout, and lead threat modeling, security reviews, and vulnerability response for the product.

• Lead development of the cross-platform desktop client, and extend it to iOS and Android.

• Lead the control and management planes: authentication with enterprise identity providers, device posture, session lifecycle, and provisioning across the platform.

• Build in debuggability and self-service so customer admins and support teams can diagnose and resolve issues without escalating to engineering.

• Own production health for ZTNA: SLOs, observability, incident management, and capacity planning.

• Own the business outcomes of ZTNA engineering: partner with Product Management and Sales on capabilities that win customers and grow revenue, and manage engineering budget, infrastructure cost, and build-versus-buy decisions to protect margins.

• Partner with the networking and datapath teams on how access policy is enforced in the network.

• Hire, develop, and lead engineers and managers across the US and India, including bringing work delivered by external partners in-house.

• Set clear goals and hold the team accountable for predictable delivery and results.

Minimum Qualifications

• 12+ years building networking, security, or distributed systems software, including 5+ years leading engineering teams and managers. Senior Director candidates bring 15+ years and experience leading multiple teams or a full product line.

• A record of shipping products and meeting commitments, including taking a product from early stage to enterprise scale.

• Strong networking fundamentals: TCP/IP, routing, DNS, NAT, and VPN and tunneling technologies.

• Strong security foundation: applied cryptography, TLS and PKI, identity and access (SAML, OAuth/OIDC, MFA), threat modeling, and secure software development.

• Hands-on systems engineering background in C/C++, Go, or similar languages, and experience with distributed systems at scale.

• Business acumen: experience weighing engineering decisions against revenue, cost, and margin, and managing an engineering budget.

• Comfort with hard technical problems, and the judgment to change course on foundational technology when it is the right call.
• Clear communication with executives, customers, and cross-functional partners.

ABOUT ALKIRA

Alkira, a Lumen company, is building the future of enterprise networking: one programmable platform to connect, secure, and operate every cloud, site, partner, data center, and AI workload.

Founded by Amir and Atif Khan, the creators of Viptela and pioneers of the SD-WAN market, Alkira was built to radically simplify how enterprises deploy and manage network infrastructure. Today, as part of Lumen, we are bringing that cloud-native operating model to a global network foundation trusted by the world’s largest enterprises.

Our platform helps customers move faster without managing hardware, stitching together providers, or operating fragmented cloud networks. Teams can build and scale connectivity on demand, apply consistent security and segmentation, and gain visibility across distributed environments from one place.

At Alkira, you’ll help shape the next chapter of networking: cloud-like consumption, private-network performance, and total control across the enterprise. We move fast, solve hard problems, and build technology that changes how global businesses connect.

COMPENSATION  

This information reflects the anticipated base salary range for this position based on current national data. Minimums and maximums may vary based on location. Individual pay is based on skills, experience and other relevant factors. 
Location Based Pay Ranges:
$167,273 - $278,789

Life at Alkira, a Lumen Connect Solution

Life at Alkira is human and connected, even in a fast moving, AI‑focused organization. We set clear expectations and trust people to meet them. With real support and shared accountability, teams collaborate better, move faster, and deliver meaningful outcomes. 

Our Lumen 8 behaviors guide how we interact, make decisions, and work together, shaping a culture built to perform and win.  To learn more about Life at Alkira, a Lumen Connect Solution
and how we live into the Lumen 8, please visit:  
https://jobs.lumen.com/global/en/life-at-lumen

Background Screening

If you are selected for a position, there will be a background screen, which may include checks for criminal records and/or motor vehicle reports and/or drug screening, depending on the position requirements. For more information on these checks, please refer to the Post Offer section of our FAQ page. Job-related concerns identified during the background screening may disqualify you from the new position or your current role. Background results will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Equal Employment Opportunities

We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all persons regardless of race, color, ancestry, citizenship, national origin, religion, veteran status, disability, genetic characteristic or information, age, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, family status, pregnancy, or other legally protected status (collectively, “protected statuses”). We do not tolerate unlawful discrimination in any employment decisions, including recruiting, hiring, compensation, promotion, benefits, discipline, termination, job assignments or training.

Privacy Notice

Alkira, a Lumen Connect Solution is committed to protecting the privacy and security of personal information collected during the recruitment and hiring process. Our Applicant Privacy Notice explains how we collect, use, disclose, and protect applicant information, as well as how individuals may request access to or deletion of their personal data.

To review Alkira's Global Employment Applicant and Talent Community Privacy Notice, please visit:
https://jobs.lumen.com/global/en/privacy-notice

Disclaimer

The job responsibilities described above indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees within this classification. It is not intended to include a comprehensive inventory of all duties and responsibilities for this job. Job duties and responsibilities are subject to change based on evolving business needs and conditions.

In any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information such as age, date of birth, or dates of school attendance or graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this information.

Please be advised that Alkira, a Lumen Connect Solution does not require any form of payment from job applicants during the recruitment process. All legitimate job openings will be posted on our official website or communicated through official company email addresses. If you encounter any job offers that request payment in exchange for employment at Alkira, a Lumen Connect Solution, they are not for employment with us but may relate to another company with a similar name.