CDN Engineer (Akamai Subject Matter Expert)

Experience : 8 to 12+ Years (Senior/Lead Level)

Employment Type : Full-time

Job Summary :

We are seeking a seasoned Senior CDN Engineer who operates as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in Akamai Technologies. This is not a traditional CDN administration role; the ideal candidate must view the Akamai platform as a sophisticated compute environment and possess deep, hands-on experience in leveraging edge computing for advanced logic, security, and performance optimization. The role involves working directly in high-traffic production environments to enhance and standardize Akamai rules, policies, and governance across a global digital platform.

Key Responsibilities and Technical Focus :

Edge Computing and Performance Optimization :

- Design, build, and optimize complex serverless edge logic using Akamai EdgeWorkers (JavaScript/TypeScript) to significantly reduce latency, improve performance, and enable dynamic, personalized user experiences.

- Implement and manage next-generation capabilities, including running AI inference at the edge to support advanced personalization or dynamic content delivery decisions.

- Be the expert in manipulating traffic, routing, logic, and rules at the edge before requests hit the origin, ensuring maximum offload and efficiency.

Traffic Management and Deployment Governance :

- Design and refine sophisticated traffic routing policies (e.g., using Global Traffic Management - GTM) for intelligent load balancing, failover, and performance-based routing across diverse origins and geographies.

- Implement controlled phased releases and canary deployments at the edge to mitigate risk and ensure seamless rollout of new application features or policy changes.

- Be hands-on in production, defining, implementing, and enforcing improved Akamai rules, policies, and governance standards across all property configurations.

Security and Modernization :

- Design, configure, and maintain advanced security approaches using Akamai Web Application Firewall (WAF) strategies to protect the high-traffic platform against common and zero-day threats.

- Implement and fine-tune Akamai Bot Manager strategies to accurately detect and mitigate malicious bot traffic while ensuring legitimate partner and search engine bot access.

- Partner directly with core engineering teams to modernize their eCommerce stack, integrating edge services as critical components of the application architecture.

Collaboration and Leadership :

- Serve as the principal Akamai SME, providing thought leadership and technical guidance to engineering, security, and platform teams on best practices for edge computing and security posture.

- Document complex edge logic, configurations, and governance policies clearly to ensure knowledge transfer and operational stability across the infrastructure team.

- Support next-generation security approaches and operational standards across a high-traffic, global digital platform.

Preferred Skills :

- Deep, proven background in Akamai technologies and extensive experience supporting a high-traffic eCommerce or global digital platform.

- Expert-level, hands-on experience with EdgeWorkers, including debugging and testing the serverless JavaScript environment.

- Strong knowledge of advanced edge routing, caching concepts (cache keys, purging, stale content delivery), and HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 protocols.

- Practical experience configuring and managing Akamai WAF and Bot Manager policies and custom rulesets.

- Strong familiarity with CI/CD processes and infrastructure-as-code (IaC) tools (e.g., Terraform) as they relate to deploying and managing CDN configurations.

- Ability to collaborate effectively across multiple disciplines, including security architecture, software engineering, and platform operations.