Network Engineer

Title: Network Engineer
Location: This is located in the NJ area/ 08540
Candidates must be local and able to go into the office 3 days per week.
duration: 6 months contract

Network Engineer who is motivated by variety, is seeking a challenging environment for professional growth, and is interested in supporting large information technology projects for one of our clients headquartered in the New Jersey area.

As a Network Engineer the resource would be involved in the full system life cycle of our local area network infrastructure for the Enterprise from development to operations. They would be responsible for designing, configuring, testing, implementing and supporting LAN solutions. Technologies supported includes: Cisco switches, firewalls, wireless controllers, access points, F5 load balancers, Cisco's Identity Services Engine (ISE), Cisco's Network Access Control (NAC), and other network technologies that may emerge over time.

Responsibilities:
Provides daily support with resolution of escalated tickets. Applies operation break fixes and other proactive maintenance activities until permanent solutions can be implemented. Supports and participates in the software deployment process for new modules, upgrades and fixes to the production environment.
Architects, designs, configures, tests, implements, reviews, supports and presents on premise and cloud networking solutions.
Keeps the existing network facilities portfolio under IT management supported and reliable through life cycle plans and investment road maps.
Stays abreast of the latest technology advancements and future trends in this domain.
Identifies technical requirements and providing cost effective solutions to meet desired business outcomes, improve productivity and enable business growth.
Identifies and automates tasks that can be automated. Validates new requests with existing architecture to verify compatibility and to ensure that business needs are met.
Develops / communicates reusable architecture policies, standards, regulatory, guidelines, procedures and metrics.
Ensures that the design and application implementation meets security and QA standards. Suggests fixes to issues by doing a thorough analysis of root cause and impact of the defect.
Maintains existing Service Level Agreements.

Requirements:
Bachelor s degree and at least 6+ years of experience working as a technical engineer and or architect with experience in designing, developing, coding, implementing, operating, supporting & managing network projects, solutions and or IT systems with heavy focus on at least 3 of the following: Cisco Switches, Cisco Routers, Cisco Firewalls, F5 Load Balancers, Cisco Wireless Controllers, Cisco ISE, Cisco NAC. Additional years of experience may be considered in lieu of a degree.
Proven experience of at least 2-3 years of experience in network operations support and troubleshooting and or similar experience in software development.
Proven experience of at least 2 years of experience working as a consultant for internal/external clients analyzing end user needs and designs and translating business requirements into network solutions.
Proven experience of at least 1 year applying architectural principles, methods, & tools to address business challenges; defining solution & architecture road maps; managing product life cycle plans / replacement projects; business case development and evaluating new technologies / developing proof of concepts.

Preferred Qualifications:
Experience in scripting, infrastructure as code using tools such as Ansible
Advanced professional training & certifications in technical specialties such as Cisco CCT, CCNA, CCNP, CCDA, CCIE; Project Management Professional (PMP), organization change management, Lean Six Sigma, business process modeling / re-engineering, ITIL, etc.
Knowledge of technologies such as: Cloud Services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, etc.), Directory Services (LDAP, ONS, DNS, AD), Configuration Management Databases (CMDB), ServiceNow, SolarWinds and Cybersecurity
Knowledge of the Utility business.