Senior Network Planning Engineer, Infrastructure Services

Sacramento Metro Area, California, United States Software and Services

Do you want to help build some of the largest and most consequential enterprise and customer technology systems in the world? Join Apple’s Information Systems and Technology (IS&T) organization.

IS&T is the engine behind everything Apple does for customers and for the people who build for them. It’s Apple’s central nervous system. Supporting 2.5 billion active Apple devices, processing billions of secure transactions, and keeping the technology that defines modern life running flawlessly, IS&T makes the impossible feel effortless.

Do you love building solutions to handle global complexity and immense scale? Imagine what you could do here.

Infrastructure Services is part of IS&T and the foundation of Apple's global network operations — managing data center equipment and systems to deliver compute, storage, and networking services for teams across Apple, including its internal developer community. From individual facilities to a worldwide network, Infrastructure Services ensures the technology underneath everything works without question.

We are seeking a technically skilled Senior Network Planning Engineer to join our global network infrastructure organization. This role serves as the critical operational and planning link between Network Architecture, IP Engineering, Optical Engineering, and Datacenter Strategy, owning the end-to-end capacity planning and infrastructure lifecycle across our Global Backbone, edge, and core datacenters. The successful candidate will combine strong foundational knowledge of both IP and Optical networking with predictive analytics, capacity modeling, and tactical/strategic business  this role, you will evaluate and plan investments across metro and long-haul Dark Fiber (DF), Submarine cable systems, and datacenter colocation (colo) facilities.

You will translate architectural designs and traffic growth trends into scoped deployment packages, build multi-year capacity forecasts for optical transport and IP router chassis/ports, manage global carrier delivery, and drive cross-functional project management from scoping through in-service turn-up. This is a high-impact role requiring technical breadth across Layer 1–3 infrastructure, deep market awareness of global telco providers, advanced analytics capability, and rigorous program coordination.

• As part of the planning group for capacity related items between Network Architecture, IP Routing, Data Modelling teamand Optical Engineering, you will take infrastructure initiatives from demand forecasting to supply decisions through site readiness and deployment. Core responsibilities include:
• End-to-End Capacity Planning & Design Translation:
  Convert architectural concepts and traffic demands into actionable, hop-level deployment packages spanning both IP and Optical domains. Plan end-to-end capacity life cycles across Layer 1 transport (DWDM/optical lines), Layer 2/3 IP routing (chassis, line cards, router port exhaust), peering/transit interconnections, and fiber spans.
• Strategic Business Case Development & Investments:
  Build and formalize tactical and strategic business cases that transition projects from concept to funded deployment. Model Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), ROI, and financial scenarios for long-term investments in metro and long-haul Dark Fiber (10–20 year IRUs vs. leases), Submarine cable systems (spectrum, fractional fiber pairs, consortium capacity), and colocation space and power.
• Predictive Capacity Modeling & Analytics:
  Develop and utilize planning models and data analytics to predict and forecast bandwidth demands, interface growth, and router capacity requirements. Analyze network telemetry,…