Lead Network Architect

Client State of Maryland
Agency Maryland Department of Health (MDH)
Location 50% Remote, Baltimore City, MD
Regular working hours are Monday - Friday 8:30am 5:00pm.
MDH OET supports 24/7/365 patient care environments, working outside of
regular work hours and on weekends, both scheduled and unscheduled, will be
required.
Interview Type In-Person
Contract Duration 1 year with Project Overview:
The Maryland Department of Health (MDH), Office of Enterprise Technology (OET) is responsible for the
design, installation, performance, management, and troubleshooting of all aspects of networking
infrastructure, down to the switch port, for its more than 35 locations located across Maryland s 24 local
jurisdictions. This includes a DataCenter with a Cisco Hyperflex environment, as well as office buildings,
local health departments, and 24x7x365 inpatient care facilities. MDH OET utilizes Cisco products for
routing, switching, wireless networking, remote access, security hardening, and network monitoring.
MDH OET needs a resource that will be responsible for being the senior, highest-level technical position
on the MDH Infrastructure team. In addition to the responsibilities listed below, this resource will also act
as a technical mentor and on-the-job trainer of less senior OET Infrastructure staff.
Duties/Responsibilities:
Lead network architecture and design, including scalability and capacity planning, hardware
evaluation and selection, and designing efficient infrastructure solutions to meet organizational
needs
Configure, test, and deploy Cisco network infrastructure equipment; maintain the Cisco Catalyst
Center environment
Manage security and compliance by configuring, updating, administering, and troubleshooting
Firepower appliances and Cisco ISE
Ensure all network infrastructure components meet required security and regulatory standards
Provide leadership and mentorship by leading large-scale migrations and hardware refresh
projects end-to-end
Coach junior and mid-level engineers to enhance technical skills
Contribute technical input for annual IT budget planning
Act as the final point of escalation for network issues and troubleshooting
Utilize monitoring tools to identify bottlenecks and optimize network performance
Collaborate on disaster recovery planning, including creating and testing failover strategies to
ensure high availability
Education:
This position requires a Bachelor s degree from an accredited college or university in Computer Science,
Information Systems, Engineering, Business, or a related scientific or technical discipline. (Note: A
Master s degree is preferred.
General Experience:
The proposed candidate must have:
At least six (6) years of experience in systems engineering
Specialized Experience:
The proposed candidate must have:
At least three (3) years of experience supervising system engineers
Experience with interactive and interpretive systems, including online, real-time data acquisition
capabilities
Must possess a current Enterprise CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure certification
Strong knowledge and hands-on experience in the following areas:
Routing protocols: BGP, OSPF, EIGRP
Network technologies: VLANs, VPC, STP
Security protocols and architecture: IPsec, SSL/TLS, Zero Trust
Cisco Nexus platforms
Cloud connectivity solutions: Direct Connect, ExpressRoute
VoIP protocols: SCCP, SIP, H.323, MGoogle Cloud Platform, RTP, SRTP, QSIG
Cisco security solutions: ASA, FirePower, ISE, AnyConnect
Quality of Service (QoS)
Infrastructure as Code tools: Cisco Catalyst Center, Terraform
Monitoring tools: SolarWinds, NetFlow, Catalyst Center, SNMP
Troubleshooting and issue resolutio