Nov 2024 – Present · 1 yr 7 mos · Bengaluru · Hybrid

• Validated Cisco enterprise routing and SD-WAN platforms across physical and virtual environments, focusing on performance, scale, and stability.
• Designed and executed test scenarios to evaluate router performance under concurrent feature workloads, covering IPv4/IPv6, IPsec, GRE, QoS, NAT, NetFlow, ZBFW, and multicast.
• Executed RFC2544/NDR performance validation using Ixia IxNetwork and BreakingPoint, analyzing throughput (Mbps), PPS/KPPS, line rate, packet drops, and QFP CPU utilization against release baselines.
• Validated system scalability across L2/L3, MPLS, multicast, security, and overlay features, executing high-scale scenarios involving routing tables, MAC entries, tunnels, sessions, and control-plane adjacencies.
• Deployed and tested Unified Threat Defense (UTD) features, including URL filtering, AMP, and traffic inspection, analyzing system performance under load and interactions with routing and security policies.
• Debugged control-plane (BGP/OSPF and SD-WAN control plane, including OMP and control connections) and data-plane issues (forwarding and packet drops) using packet captures and logs, performing root cause analysis for network and performance anomalies.
• Reproduced complex customer issues by designing and building multi-device topologies and collaborated with development teams to validate fixes using root cause analysis and packet-level evidence.
• Developed and leveraged AI-driven automation workflows to streamline traffic testing, debugging, and testbed triage, improving efficiency and reducing manual effort in large-scale network validation environments.

Aug 2022 – Oct 2024 · 2 yrs 2 mos · Bengaluru · Hybrid

• Deployed and managed SD-WAN infrastructure, including onboarding edge devices, provisioning controllers (vManage, vSmart, and vBond), and pushing centralized templates and policies.
• Validated traffic behavior across IPsec-based overlay networks, analyzing packet flows, encryption paths, and feature interactions under varying network conditions.
• Tested application optimization features (AppQoE), including TCP optimization and SSL proxy, evaluating performance using metrics such as concurrent connections (CC), connections per second (CPS), and throughput.
• Performed performance testing on traditional WAN routing environments, covering features such as CEF (IPv4/IPv6), HQoS (Hierarchical QoS), GRE, NAT, and IPsec (single and multi-tunnel across IPv4 and IPv6).
• Executed performance validation across multiple release cycles, performing packet-level debugging using Wireshark to isolate traffic anomalies, packet drops, and protocol issues, identifying critical defects.
• Built data-driven test infrastructure using YAML testbeds, JSON profile mappings, and Jinja2 templates, leveraging Jenkins pipelines to enable scalable and automated network validation.

Aug 2021 – Jul 2022 · 11 mos · Bengaluru · Hybrid

• Set up virtual testbeds by deploying Cisco UCS infrastructure, provisioning ESXi, and bringing up virtual platforms (C8000v) and Linux servers to support scalable testing environments.
• Migrated test scripts from local workspace-based management to centralized version control (Bitbucket), improving maintainability and eliminating duplicate artifacts.
• Supported SD-WAN and routing feature validation across multiple builds in controlled lab environments.