Senior CDN Engineer

Senior CDN Engineer - Contract – Remote – $70.00 - $83.33/hr.

The final salary or hourly wage, as applicable, paid to each candidate/applicant for this position is ultimately dependent on a variety of factors, including, but not limited to, the candidate’s/applicant’s qualifications, skills, and level of experience as well as the geographical location of the position.

The end client is unable to sponsor or transfer visas for this position; all parties authorized to work in the US without sponsorship are encouraged to apply.

Our client is seeking a Senior CDN Engineer for a Remote Opportunity.

Role Description

Platform Engineering & Automation

• Design, implement, support, and optimize enterprise-scale CDN platforms across highly distributed global environments.

• Build and maintain automation frameworks using Python, Terraform, GitOps, Ansible, and similar Infrastructure-as-Code technologies.

• Develop intelligent automation, self-healing capabilities, AI-powered operational assistants, and automated remediation workflows.

• Establish CDN engineering standards, deployment patterns, implementation guidelines, and operational best practices.

• Integrate CDN services with enterprise platforms including ServiceNow, Jira, GitHub, Azure DevOps, SIEM platforms, and cloud-native services.

CDN & Edge Services Management

• Configure, optimize, and troubleshoot Akamai Property Manager, Edge DNS, Global Traffic Management (GTM), Cloudlets, Bot Manager, and related edge security services.

• Design and implement content delivery optimization strategies including caching, origin offload, traffic engineering, request routing, and performance tuning.

• Support API acceleration, API caching, API security, and API gateway integrations.

• Develop CDN reference architectures and implementation standards to support enterprise application teams.

Security & Reliability

• Implement and maintain security controls including WAF, DDoS protection, bot mitigation, API security, certificate management, rate limiting, and Zero Trust security principles.

• Partner with security teams to ensure compliance with enterprise security requirements and standards.

• Lead vulnerability analysis, root cause investigations, incident response efforts, and reliability improvement initiatives.

• Promote platform resiliency, availability, and security through continuous assessment and operational improvements.

Monitoring & Operations

• Build and maintain observability solutions, dashboards, alerts, SLIs, SLOs, and proactive monitoring capabilities.

• Monitor and analyze CDN traffic patterns, cache hit ratios, origin offload metrics, latency, throughput, bandwidth utilization, and end-user performance.

• Leverage AI-assisted analytics and AIOps capabilities for anomaly detection, capacity forecasting, operational insights, and performance optimization.

• Participate in operational on-call duties to support 24x7 production environments and critical deployment activities.

• Support incident management, troubleshooting, escalation, and recovery efforts across global environments.

Collaboration & Leadership

• Collaborate with developers, platform engineers, cloud engineers, network teams, security teams, and business stakeholders to deliver scalable and secure digital experiences.

• Serve as a technical advisor and subject matter expert for CDN and edge delivery technologies.

• Mentor junior engineers and promote engineering best practices across the organization.

• Lead technical discussions, contribute to architecture decisions, and drive continuous improvement initiatives.

• A CDN and edge delivery expert who can write code as needed and understands software engineering concepts including Object-Oriented, Functional, and Procedural programming.

• Strong passion and thorough understanding of what it takes to build, operate, secure, and optimize highly available global content delivery platforms.

• Strong passion and technical expertise in automating operational and platform functions through code and Infrastructure-as-Code practices.

• Strong technical expertise with CDN technologies, content delivery architectures, DNS, edge routing, caching strategies, traffic engineering, and application performance optimization.

• Strong technical expertise with enterprise CDN platforms, including Akamai (preferred) and working knowledge of Cloudflare.

• Strong technical expertise with multi-cloud environments including AWS, Azure, GCP, containers, Kubernetes, edge computing, and modern microservices architectures.

• Strong technical expertise with observability, monitoring, operational analytics, and AIOps platforms.

• Strong technical expertise with networking fundamentals including TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP/HTTPS, TLS/mTLS, proxies, load balancing, CDN edge routing, and WAF technologies.

• Strong technical expertise with automation frameworks, version control systems, GitOps, CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure-as-Code, and DevOps operational support.

• Strong experience leveraging AI, Generative AI, and intelligent automation technologies to improve operational efficiency, incident response, troubleshooting, and platform reliability.

• Strong experience implementing and operating security controls including WAF, Bot Management, API security, rate limiting, DDoS protection, certificate lifecycle management, and Zero Trust principles.

• Strong troubleshooting and analytical skills with the ability to diagnose complex issues across CDN, DNS, application, network, cloud, API, and security domains.

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to lead technical discussions, mentor engineers, influence architecture decisions, and serve as a CDN subject matter expert.

Skills & Requirements

• 5+ years of experience designing, implementing, and supporting CDN, edge delivery, networking, or related infrastructure platforms.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Network Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• Hands-on experience with Akamai technologies including:

• Property Manager

• Edge DNS

• Global Traffic Management (GTM)

• Cloudlets

• Bot Manager

• WAF and Security Products

• Working knowledge of Cloudflare or other enterprise CDN platforms.

• Experience building and maintaining automation frameworks using Python, Terraform, GitOps, Ansible, or similar Infrastructure-as-Code technologies.

• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, version control systems, and DevOps operational practices.

• Proficiency in two or more programming or scripting languages including Python, Node.js, Java, JavaScript, Shell Script, or PowerShell.

• Strong understanding of networking fundamentals including TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP/HTTPS, TLS/mTLS, proxies, load balancing, CDN routing, and application delivery.

• Experience working with REST APIs, Postman, API acceleration, API caching, API gateway integrations, and API security controls.

• Experience supporting cloud environments including AWS, Azure, and GCP.

• Experience working with distributed platforms, containers, Kubernetes, and edge computing technologies.

• Experience using observability and monitoring platforms such as Grafana, Datadog, Splunk, New Relic, Dynatrace, Prometheus, Azure Monitor, and Akamai TrafficPeak.

• Experience troubleshooting production issues across CDN, DNS, networking, cloud, application, and security layers.

• Experience implementing security controls including WAF, DDoS protection, Bot Management, certificate management, API security, and rate limiting.

• Experience supporting large-scale enterprise digital platforms and globally distributed web applications.

• Hands-on experience building or supporting real-time Single Page Applications (SPA).

• Experience leveraging AI, Generative AI, AIOps, or intelligent automation platforms to improve operational efficiency and incident response.

• Experience implementing self-healing automation, intelligent runbooks, and automated remediation workflows.

• Strong understanding of CDN traffic engineering, origin optimization, content caching strategies, performance tuning, and digital experience optimization.

• Experience building operational dashboards, alerts, SLIs, SLOs, and reliability-focused monitoring solutions.

• Experience integrating CDN solutions with ServiceNow, Jira, GitHub, Azure DevOps, SIEM tools, and cloud-native services.

• Strong technical expertise architecting secure, scalable, and highly available edge delivery solutions across multi-cloud environments.

• Experience leading technical discussions, mentoring engineers, and influencing architecture and design decisions.

• Experience supporting 24x7 production environments and participating in incident response, escalation management, and root cause analysis activities.

Benefits/Other Compensation

This position is a contract role where Hays offers you the opportunity to enroll in full medical benefits, dental benefits, vision benefits, 401K and Life Insurance ($20,000 benefit).

Why Hays?

You will be working with a professional recruiter who has intimate knowledge of the industry and market trends. Your Hays recruiter will lead you through a thorough screening process in order to understand your skills, experience, needs, and drivers. You will also get support on resume writing, interview tips, and career planning, so when there’s a position you really want, you’re fully prepared to get it.

Nervous about an upcoming interview? Unsure how to write a new resume?

Visit the Hays Career Advice section to learn top tips to help you stand out from the crowd when job hunting.

Hays is committed to building a thriving culture of diversity that embraces people with different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. We believe that the more inclusive we are, the better we serve our candidates, clients, and employees. We are an equal employment opportunity employer, and we comply with all applicable laws prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, creed, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity), age, national origin or ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran status, marital status, genetic information, HIV-positive status, as well as any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. One of Hays’ guiding principles is ‘do the right thing’. We also believe that actions speak louder than words. In that regard, we train our staff on ensuring inclusivity throughout the entire recruitment process and counsel our clients on these principles. If you have any questions about Hays or any of our processes, please contact us.

In accordance with applicable federal, state, and local law protecting qualified individuals with known disabilities, Hays will attempt to reasonably accommodate those individuals unless doing so would create an undue hardship on the company. Any qualified applicant or consultant with a disability who requires an accommodation in order to perform the essential functions of the job should call or text 813.336.5570.

Drug testing may be required; please contact a recruiter for more information.