Network Engineer, Catalyst

Orbis is seeking a Staff Network Engineer to define architecture across a feature area or entire subsystem of Catalyst - our secure, multi-cluster service mesh platform - and set the patterns that other engineers follow. You will own the technical roadmap for your area, whether that is the event-driven control plane, the proxy-based data plane, the policy authorization system, or the federation and peering layer.

This is a high-impact role for someone who has shaped platform architecture and wants to set technical direction for a team building critical infrastructure.

• Define architecture across multiple feature areas or subsystems; set patterns and standards that other engineers follow
• Own the technical roadmap for your area; make build‑vs‑integrate decisions for platform capabilities
• Drive reliability strategy: define SLOs/SLAs, lead incident response for critical cross-component issues, and architect for resilience
• Define QA philosophy and test pyramid strategy for your product area; own quality gates in the deployment pipeline
• Translate multi-source insight - operational data, customer feedback, competitive landscape - into architectural and roadmap decisions
• Define AI tooling strategy for your area; own agentic workflow architecture and make build‑vs‑integrate decisions for AI‑assisted features
• Grow team capability through deliberate coaching; mentor senior engineers toward staff‑level thinking

• 7+ years of experience with a track record of shaping platform or infrastructure areas, not just features
• Comprehensive understanding of service mesh platform architecture: management plane (control plane orchestrator, token service, policy engine, observability) and data plane (proxy, DNS); deep knowledge of the separation of concerns between planes
• Ability to explain how BGP's design principles inform multi-cluster mesh federation across all key dimensions: autonomous systems as cluster nodes, route advertisements as service registrations, path arrays for loop prevention, full table sync on session establishment, delta updates, keepalive/hold timers, encrypted RPC session transport, and where the analogy breaks down
• Thorough understanding of worker thread architectures that isolate I/O from a main event loop: dedicated threads for peer connection management (using state machine frameworks), atomic file system-based configuration writers, and DNS zone generators - each following entry point / logic / pure builder patterns
• Complete understanding of certificate‑bound token services: ECDSA P‑384 (ES384) signing, certificate thumbprint binding (RFC 8705), stateless architectures, JWKS endpoints, and per‑service token scoping
• Ability to articulate the tradeoffs between authorization model generations: application‑layer per‑RPC JWT auth vs. network‑layer per‑request mTLS‑based policy enforcement across dimensions of scope, granularity, principal identity, deployment topology, and fault impact
• Has set technical direction others followed and can point to a platform subsystem and explain what they built and what they'd do differently
• Applicants must include a link to their Git Hub profile within their resume, demonstrating relevant code repositories, projects, and contributions that reflect their technical experience and capabilities.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance

• Experience designing or extending event‑sourced or journal‑backed state systems with crash recovery and deterministic replay
• Track record of defining team norms, working agreements, and communication standards that improve delivery velocity and quality
• Experience leading hiring for senior and staff‑level infrastructure or platform roles
• Experience advising leadership on platform capability investments and the evolving role of AI in infrastructure development
• Background in national security, intelligence, or defense environments with direct understanding of mission‑critical operational requirements
• Willingness to travel 10‑20% for customer engagement, architecture reviews, or team collaboration

• Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and…