Senior Network Engineer, Network Operations

This engineer will serve as a senior technical resource for network operations, implementation, troubleshooting, lifecycle management and documentation. The position requires someone who can independently own complex operational issues from initial identification through restoration, validation and follow-up.

The engineer will work within established architecture, security and engineering standards while collaborating with infrastructure teams, vendors, carriers and regional site personnel.

Responsibilities

• Support day-to-day operations for enterprise network infrastructure across distributed research and laboratory environments.
• Serve as an escalation point for complex network incidents and performance issues.
• Troubleshoot Layer 2 and Layer 3 connectivity, routing, switching, wireless, VPN, firewall, DNS/DHCP and WAN issues.
• Configure, deploy, monitor, maintain and upgrade Cisco Catalyst and Meraki infrastructure.
• Support WAN and hybrid connectivity between facilities, cloud environments, partners and research locations.
• Implement approved network changes and validate successful completion.
• Coordinate troubleshooting and service restoration with carriers, vendors, facilities, security and engineering teams.
• Support onsite network activities involving cabling, console access, equipment installation, hardware replacement and carrier handoffs.
• Maintain network diagrams, IP addressing records, device inventories, circuit information and configuration documentation.
• Create operational runbooks, procedures, implementation plans, validation steps and rollback plans.
• Perform firmware upgrades, hardware replacements, configuration maintenance and equipment-refresh activities.
• Monitor network health, availability, capacity and performance.
• Lead incident response, root-cause analysis, corrective action and post-incident documentation.
• Identify opportunities to automate monitoring, validation, configuration and operational tasks.
• Participate in network deployments, site buildouts and infrastructure modernization initiatives.
• Collaborate with teams working across U.S. and European time zones.

• Advanced enterprise Cisco routing and switching experience.
• Strong knowledge of Layer 2 and Layer 3 networking, including VLANs, trunking, STP, ACLs, redundancy and high availability.
• Hands-on BGP and OSPF implementation and troubleshooting experience.
• Experience troubleshooting complex WAN and inter-site connectivity.
• Experience with Cisco Catalyst and Cisco Meraki switching, wireless, monitoring and lifecycle management.
• Packet-level troubleshooting experience using Wireshark, flow data, telemetry or comparable tools.
• Experience supporting enterprise wireless environments.
• Working knowledge of VPNs, firewalls, network segmentation, secure remote access and certificate-based authentication.
• Experience developing technical documentation, including diagrams, runbooks, inventories, implementation plans and recovery procedures.
• Ability to independently manage complex incidents through resolution.
• Strong communication, organization and technical judgment.
• U.S. citizenship.
• Residence within the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area with the ability to provide onsite support in Riverdale and Reston.
• Ability to travel domestically and internationally up to 25%.

Preferred Qualifications

• CCNP Enterprise certification or equivalent enterprise-networking experience.
• Microsoft Azure networking or comparable cloud-networking experience.
• Azure Virtual WAN or similar cloud-WAN experience.
• Familiarity with 802.1X, NAC/RADIUS and certificate-based wireless authentication.
• Network automation experience using Python, PowerShell, REST APIs or comparable technologies.
• Experience with configuration management and version control.
• Experience supporting critical research, laboratory or similarly high-availability environments.