Network Engineer

Job Description

Location: Houston, TX

Type: Full-Time

Department: Infrastructure & IT Operations

Reports to: Network Manager / Head of Infrastructure

The Role

We re hiring a Network Engineer who designs, builds, and secures the backbone of our digital operations. You ll own enterprise networking from campus LANs to cloud interconnects ensuring low latency, high availability, and ironclad security. If you live for packet traces, BGP tables, and zero-downtime cutovers, let s talk.

What You ll Do

Core Responsibilities

• Design and deploy LAN/WAN infrastructure: VLANs, VRFs, VXLAN, SD-WAN, and campus Wi-Fi.
• Manage routing & switching: OSPF, BGP, EIGRP, EVPN, STP, LACP; Cisco/Juniper/Arista platforms.
• Secure the perimeter: Firewalls (Palo Alto, Fortinet, Cisco ASA), NAC, ZTNA, VPN (IPsec, WireGuard).
• Optimize cloud networking: AWS VPC, Transit Gateway, Direct Connect, Azure VNet, Google Cloud Platform Cloud Interconnect.
• Monitor & troubleshoot: SNMP, NetFlow/sFlow, packet capture (Wireshark), telemetry (PrometheGrafana).
• Automate network ops: Ansible, Python, Terraform, GitOps for config management and provisioning.
• Lead capacity planning: Traffic forecasting, QoS, bandwidth upgrades, redundancy (MPLS, DIA).
• Handle incidents: On-call rotation, root cause analysis, post-mortems, and failover testing.
• Document everything: Network diagrams (Visio/Lucid), runbooks, IPAM, change logs.

What You Bring

Must-Have

• 4+ years in network engineering or administration.
• Hands-on routing/switching: Cisco IOS-XE/NX-OS, Juniper JunOS, or Arista EOS.
• Firewall expertise: Policy design, NAT, threat prevention, SSL decryption.
• Cloud networking: VPC peering, VPN gateways, load balancer routing.
• Troubleshooting mastery: TCP/UDP, DNS, traceroute, span/mirror ports, syslog.
• Scripting/automation: Python or Bash; config templating (Jinja2).
• Certifications: CCNP, JNCIP, PCNSE, or equivalent experience.

Nice-to-Have

• SD-WAN (VeloCloud, Cisco Viptela, Silver Peak).
• Network automation platforms: Nautobot, NetBox, Ansible AWX.
• Wireless: Ekahau surveys, 802.1X, WPA3-Enterprise.
• Load balancing: F5 BIG-IP, NGINX, AWS ALB/NLB.
• IPv6 deployment and transition strategies.
• Experience in regulated environments (PCI, HIPAA, SOC2).

Tech Stack

• Core Switching: Cisco Catalyst/Nexus, Arista 7000 series
• Routing: Cisco ASR/ISR, Juniper MX, BGP multi-homing
• Firewalls: Palo Alto PAN-OS, FortiGate
• Cloud: AWS VPC, Azure ExpressRoute, Google Cloud Platform NCC
• Wi-Fi: Cisco Meraki, Aruba, Ruckus
• Automation: Ansible, Python, Terraform, GitLab CI
• Monitoring: LogicMonitor, Zabbix, Grafana, Elastic
• Tools: Wireshark, SolarWinds, Infoblox, Visio