Position Summary
The Sr. Network Engineer is the senior technical authority on enterprise networking within Encore’s Infrastructure Managed Services (IMS) practice. This role leads network delivery across Encore’s managed services customer environments, with a primary focus on a major financial services account, while partnering with the IT Operations Command Center (ITOCC) to operationalize network support at scale. The engineer owns network architecture standards, automation, change management, and serves as the senior escalation point for the most complex network-layer incidents and problems.
Responsibilities:
· Lead enterprise network delivery (routing, switching, firewalls, load balancing, wireless, VPN) for Encore managed services customers, including design standards, change management, and lifecycle planning across customer environments.
· Conduct discovery workshops and produce architecture design documents, network diagrams, and runbooks alongside Encore project management and customer technical teams.
· Serve as the senior technical authority and final escalation point for network-layer incidents, problems, and major changes — including routing protocol troubleshooting, packet capture analysis, and root cause investigation.
· Operate as the Pilot engineer within Encore’s Pilot/Co-Pilot delivery model on major customer accounts, with customer engineers serving as the Co-Pilot through transition and steady-state operations.
· Partner with the IT Operations Command Center (ITOCC) to define alert thresholds, runbook libraries, and L2 triage procedures so analysts can effectively support network environments at scale.
· Design and maintain network automation for configuration management, compliance validation, and change orchestration using Ansible (network modules), Python (Netmiko, Nornir), or equivalent infrastructure-as-code tooling.
· Lead network refresh and migration projects (e.g., legacy IOS to IOS-XE, Catalyst 6500 to Catalyst 9000/Nexus, on-premises to cloud connectivity via Azure ExpressRoute or AWS Direct Connect) for customer environments.
· Develop and maintain training materials, internal documentation, and template libraries that allow IMS and ITOCC teams to extend network coverage to new customers.
· Serve as Encore’s deep technical authority on enterprise networking; support pre-sales conversations, customer scoping, and architecture decisions across the Infrastructure Managed Services portfolio.
· Mentor IMS and ITOCC engineers on networking best practices and contribute to the evolving managed services roadmap (Bronze, Silver, Gold tier offerings).
· Other duties as assigned.
Qualifications:
· Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or related field; relevant industry certifications a strong plus.
· 7+ years of hands-on experience designing, deploying, and operating enterprise networks in production; CCNP Enterprise (or equivalent professional-level certification) required.
· Deep, demonstrable expertise with Cisco routing and switching at scale – Catalyst, Nexus, ASR, and ISR platforms; BGP, OSPF, EIGRP, VRF, MPLS, QoS, and high-availability designs (HSRP/VRRP, StackWise, vPC) for environments of 100+ network devices. Arista experience a strong plus.
· Strong production experience with enterprise firewalls (Palo Alto, Fortinet, or Check Point) and load balancers (F5, Citrix ADC); experience operating in regulated environments (financial services, healthcare) a plus.
· Network automation fluency with Ansible (network modules), Python (Netmiko, Nornir), or equivalent; comfort with YAML, Jinja templating, and Git-based configuration workflows.
· Production experience with data center networking — Cisco Nexus, VXLAN/EVPN, leaf-spine architectures, and cloud connectivity (Azure ExpressRoute, AWS Direct Connect); familiarity with network visibility tools (NetFlow, ThousandEyes, SolarWinds NPM, or equivalent).
· Prior MSP or managed services experience preferred; experience leading customer-facing engagements as the senior technical lead; CCIE (Enterprise Infrastructure or Data Center), CCNP, or Palo Alto PCNSE highly desirable.