Network Lead Engineer

Role: Network Engineer Lead (Core Engineering Lead networks)

Location: Chicago, IL

Duration: Long Term Contract

We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated M&A Network Engineer to join our IT/Network Operations team. This project-based role will focus on supporting mergers and acquisitions (M&A) by assessing, integrating, and optimizing network infrastructures. The Network Engineer will collaborate with cross-functional teams to assist in designing solutions for Client and International business units, partners and customers. The Network Engineer will build, deploy, and support the solutions in conjunction with other engineering and operations resources. They will be expected to work effectively with key business stakeholders and the IT team, providing advice, communicating key decisions and ensuring IT solutions adhere to appropriate architecture standards.

Core Responsibilities

• Will work with Infrastructure leadership, other IS teams and business units to engineer, recommend, plan technical projects to meet network reliability, tactical, performance, or controls needs.

• Analyzes business needs; gather requirements, designs, installs, troubleshoots, and supports technical solutions in a world-class infrastructure.

• Develops and documents models, plans, diagrams, illustrations, and procedures in support of engineering activities and network related business initiatives.

• Participates in regular meetings and conference calls with customers and IT staff to help qualify opportunities and technical solutions.

• Creates capital expenditure (CAPEX) requests and tracks the progress of hardware & software orders.

Key Skills and Experience

• 10+ years experience in network engineering. Experience network engineering and operation with an enterprise organization preferred.

• 5+ years of experience leading project teams and/or mentoring junior engineers.

• In depth knowledge and understanding of networking technologies, design principles, and the practical application of routers, switches, virtualization, storage, storage networking virtualization/zoning, load-balancers and network security.

• Experience working with SDN solutions such as Cisco ACI, VMware VNX

• Knowledge of network security solutions such as firewalls, VPNs, Intrusion detection/prevention, and web application firewalls.

• Strong technical knowledge and experience in several of the following (certification a plus):

• Cisco Routing/Switching, spine/leaf architecture

• F5 LTM/GTM

• Cisco UCS & Nexus

• Cisco ACI

• Cisco WAAS, WCCP

• Cisco security solutions

• Cisco ISE

• Palo Alto Networks firewalls and security solutions

• QoS, prioritization of voice and video

• Network automation

• Proven understanding of network segmentation/isolation, encryption architectures

• Strong documentation skills and experience generating technical documents, diagrams, solutions specifications, guidelines, processes, and procedures.

• Scripting skills are a plus

• Excellent communications and customer service skills with proven ability to communicate professionally in a corporate environment.

• Experience in standardizing and automating network configuration and deployment

• Experience with software and hardware troubleshooting and system monitoring.

• Ability to work nights and weekends as needed for implementations and being a point of escalation

• Have proven recent experience in leading a team. Potential team may consist of up to 5 people

• You will be a self-motivated achiever who gains satisfaction from providing excellent customer service;

• Able to quickly grasp and interpret salient information;

• Able to take a proactive approach without the need for supervision;

• Excellent analytical & interpretive skills;

• Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to communicate with global technical teams;

• Autonomy for seniors and resolution of issues/team leaders.

• Cisco certifications in Routing and Switching preferred