Senior WAN & ISP Engineer

Mistral AI

Paris, France

The Role

As a Senior WAN & ISP Engineer, you will design, deploy, and optimize Mistral’s external network connectivity, ensuring high-performance, reliable, and secure connections between our data centers and the global internet. This role focuses on connecting our infrastructure to the world, not internal data center networking.

You will manage ISP relationships, fiber infrastructure, and firewall systems to support Mistral’s mission-critical operations. Your work will enable seamless, scalable, and secure global connectivity, ensuring our platforms remain accessible and performant for users and partners worldwide.

What You Will Do

Negotiate, provision, and maintain ISP contracts, SLAs, and peering agreements (e.g., with Orange, Colt, Equinix) to ensure robust external connectivity;
Design and optimize multi-ISP connectivity for redundancy, performance, and failover resilience;
Monitor and troubleshoot fiber circuits to guarantee uptime, scalability, and rapid issue resolution;
Configure, manage, and audit enterprise firewalls (e.g., Palo Alto, Fortinet, Cisco ASA) to enforce security policies and threat mitigation;
Implement and align firewall rules with organizational security policies in collaboration with security teams;
Design and maintain BGP routing policies, traffic engineering, and failover mechanisms for global network reliability;
Optimize latency, bandwidth, and reliability metrics (e.g., packet loss, jitter, throughput) for WAN performance.

What We're Looking For

7+ years of experience in WAN, ISP connectivity, or external networking;
Deep expertise in BGP, OSPF, MPLS, and TCP/IP, including route filtering, path selection, and traffic engineering;
Hands-on experience with ISP peering (e.g., AMS-IX, DE-CIX, France-IX) and multi-homing architectures;
Proficiency in firewall management (Palo Alto, Fortinet, Cisco ASA, or similar);
Familiarity with fiber optics, DWDM, and carrier-grade networking hardware;
Experience with network monitoring tools (e.g., Grafana, Prometheus, Wireshark, Smokeping, RIPE RIS);
Knowledge of network automation (Ansible, Python, or similar) is a plus;
Strong understanding of network security principles (DDoS mitigation, VPNs, access controls);
Excellent problem-solving, analytical, and troubleshooting skills for complex WAN/ISP issues;
Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, collaborative environment with cross-functional teams;
Strong communication and negotiation skills (English required; French is a plus);
Experience in vendor management, including contracts, SLAs, and escalations.