Software Engineer Network Automation, WAN & Edge at Mistral (Paris, France)

Mistral· Paris, France·4d ago

Role details

Employment

Full-Time

Mistral at a glance

A French AI lab building open and frontier-grade large language models, with the full developer and enterprise stack around them.

Mistral is a French AI lab that builds open and frontier-grade large language models and sells the full stack around them: developer tooling, an agent studio, consumer and enterprise apps like Le Chat and Vibe, custom model training, and its own GPU compute. Its edge is deployment control, with open weights, EU hosting, and self-hosting for regulated and sovereign buyers.

$3B+ raised · latest: Series C · 1.7B euros · Sept 2025 · backed by ASML, Nvidia, Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global

Job description

ABOUT MISTRAL

Mistral provides full-stack AI solutions: from frontier models to developer tools, applications, and compute. We partner with enterprises tackling the hardest problems—across high-stakes industries like finance, manufacturing, defense, healthcare, and the public sector—co-creating customized AI systems that they can run on their terms.

We are a dynamic, collaborative team passionate about AI and its potential to transform society. Our diverse workforce thrives in competitive environments and is committed to driving innovation. Our teams are distributed between Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East. We are creative, low-ego and team-spirited.

THE ROLE

As a Software Engineer, Network Automation - WAN & Edge, you will design, automate, and operate resilient connectivity between data centers, cloud environments, external networks, and the internet. Your work will span routing, firewalls, traffic engineering, and production troubleshooting.

This is a hands-on role for an experienced network engineer who can build, test, debug, and review production-grade automation. Networking depth and strong software-engineering judgment matter more than familiarity with any particular language, platform, or tool.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

Design and evolve resilient inter-site, cloud, and internet connectivity for large-scale AI infrastructure.
Own external BGP policy and traffic engineering at the edge, including route filtering, failover, and capacity planning.
Build API-driven automation for edge routing, firewalls, VPNs, carrier connectivity, and network segmentation.
Coordinate with carriers, cloud connectivity providers, colocation partners, and vendors on design, provisioning, incident escalation, and service improvement.
Design safe change workflows with automated validation and resilience testing, staged rollouts, observability, rollback, and recovery.
Participate in on-call rotation, troubleshoot active WAN and edge incidents, restore service, and turn root causes into lasting improvements.
Review designs and code, explain networking trade-offs, and help raise network engineering quality across the organization.

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

Deep, hands-on WAN and edge networking experience across internet connectivity, data-center interconnect, private WAN, or cloud networking.
A track record of taking external BGP designs from whiteboard to production and debugging them during production incidents.
Experience integrating and troubleshooting stateful firewalls, NAT, asymmetric routing, and redundant edge designs on at least one major routing or firewall platform.
Experience building or operating production network automation using network-management APIs and data models. You understand desired state and idempotency; relevant technologies might include REST, NETCONF, gNMI/OpenConfig, Ansible, or Terraform.
Strong software-engineering fundamentals in a general-purpose language. You can design, test, debug, and review production systems and are willing to become productive in Go.
Operational troubleshooting experience using routing and flow state, packet captures, link health, telemetry, and logs to diagnose production incidents.
Clear, pragmatic communication and effective stakeholder management. You can translate technical needs into connectivity designs and provider requirements, define acceptance criteria and service-level expectations, and provide technical leadership.

NICE TO HAVE

Experience with FortiGate, FortiManager, or comparable edge and firewall platforms.
Deeper specialization in external connectivity, such as public-cloud or hybrid-cloud interconnect, or internet transit and peering.
Exposure to edge security and scale techniques such as RPKI and route-origin validation, DDoS mitigation, or global traffic engineering.
Familiarity with streaming telemetry, network source-of-truth systems, and configuration-compliance tooling.
Experience reading, reviewing, or contributing to Go code.
Familiarity with Kubernetes controllers, operators, or other declarative, reconciliation-based systems.

WHAT WE OFFER

We offer a comprehensive benefits package designed to support your well-being, growth, and work-life balance. Benefits vary by country and may include healthcare coverage, parental leave, retirement plans, relocation support, wellness programs, meal and transportation allowances, and other location-specific perks.

For the most up-to-date details on benefits available in your location, please refer to our Benefits page app.notion.com

PRIVACY POLICY

Your privacy matters to us. You can learn more about how we handle your personal data in our Applicant Privacy Policy legal.mistral.ai

Why work at Mistral

Culture: Flat structure, high ownership, low ego, and a "builders, not order takers" mentality. The company values audacity, speed, rigor, and customer centricity.
Remote/Hybrid/Office: Based in Paris (15 rue des Halles); relocation support and visa sponsorship offered. Specific remote/hybrid policy not detailed, but global team suggests flexibility.
Notable perks and benefits (from careers page):
- 20 weeks paid parental leave for all birthing parents.
- 100% employer-sponsored medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents.
- 6% 401k match (US) / 5% pension contribution (UK).
- Childcare support (reserved daycare seats or financial assistance).
- Meal allowances and transportation support.
- Fitness and wellness subsidies.
- Relocation and settling-in services.
- Financial and career planning support.
Team composition: 900+ employees from 30+ nationalities; 50% female leaders.
Interview process: For science, product, and engineering roles: intro conversation → 2-5 technical exercises → 1-3 interviews (hiring manager + teammates) → values conversation → reference checks.

About Mistral

Company Overview

One-liner: Mistral is a French AI company building open, frontier-grade large language models, developer platforms, and applied AI solutions for enterprises and governments.
Entity Type: Private (Series C)
Headquarters: Paris, France (15 rue des Halles)
Founded: April 2023
Founders: Arthur Mensch (CEO), Guillaume Lample (Chief Science Officer), Timothée Lacroix (CTO)

Core Business

Primary industry/industries: Artificial Intelligence, Large Language Models, Enterprise AI Software
Target customers: B2B, Enterprise, Government, and Developers (B2D)
Mission or purpose statement: "To make frontier AI open to all, and together solve the world's hardest problems."

Products & Services

Mistral Large: Frontier-grade large language model for complex reasoning and enterprise tasks.
Mistral Small 3: Efficient, lightweight model for cost-sensitive deployments.
Mistral Code / Vibe: AI agent for long-horizon, autonomous software development and task completion.
Le Chat: Consumer-facing AI assistant and chatbot.
Mistral OCR 4: State-of-the-art document intelligence model for extracting and understanding text from images and PDFs.
Mistral Forge: Custom model development service for training, aligning, and evaluating proprietary AI models on private data.
Mistral Studio: Platform for building, testing, and running AI agents and applications with full control.
Mistral Compute: Infrastructure and orchestration platform for frontier-scale training and inference (edge to cloud).
Mistral Search Toolkit: Tools for integrating search and retrieval into AI applications.
Voxtral: Voice AI model for speech-based interactions.

Market Standing

Valuation/Market Cap: $4.016 billion (latest reported valuation, per CB Insights; date not specified but likely post-Series C)
Key Metric: Total funding raised across Seed, Series A, Series B, and Series C rounds (specific amounts not disclosed in search results).
Notable Investors/Partners: Not explicitly named in search results, but the company partners with organizations in finance, manufacturing, defense, energy, and the public sector.
Growth Signals:
- Rapid scaling: 900+ employees across 30+ nationalities as of mid-2026.
- 50% of leadership roles held by women.
- Key product launches on a near-monthly cadence (e.g., Mistral OCR, Forge, Vibe, Compute, Search Toolkit, Voxtral).
- Strong presence in high-stakes, regulated industries (defense, energy, public sector).

Competitive Advantages

Open-source DNA: Commitment to openness, transparency, and cost efficiency differentiates Mistral from closed, Big Tech AI labs.
Full-stack ownership: Controls the entire stack from frontier models to developer tools, applications, and compute infrastructure, enabling deep customization and reliability.
European leadership: Positioned as a sovereign, European AI champion, appealing to governments and enterprises seeking data control and regulatory compliance.
Speed and rigor: Culture of rapid experimentation, iteration, and data-driven decision-making.

Strategic Focus

Enterprise and government partnerships: Co-creating tailored AI systems for mission-critical use cases in finance, manufacturing, defense, energy, and public sector.
Open platform ecosystem: Expanding Mistral Studio and Forge to enable customers to build custom models and agents on their own data.
Infrastructure as a product: Commercializing Mistral Compute to become a platform for others to train and run AI workloads.
Continuous model innovation: Releasing new frontier models and capabilities (OCR, voice, code agents) at a rapid pace.

Sources