CDN Engineer - Akamai

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.