L3 Network Support Engineer

Network & Systems Administrator

Based in Maryland, you will be a key member of a 24/7/365 operations team responsible for supporting highly available, mission-critical communications infrastructure. This role serves as a senior escalation point, ensuring the performance, reliability, and security of networking and IT systems.

• Provide L3 technical support through Etherstack's 24/7/365 service desk, including on-call rotations and shift-based coverage; respond to, triage, escalate, and resolve incidents in accordance with defined SLAs.
• Proactively monitor all IT systems, networks, and cloud infrastructure using observability tooling; identify and remediate issues before they impact operations.
• Design, deploy, and maintain Etherstack's IT networks—including cloud-hosted environments—with a focus on resilience, redundancy, and security; augment infrastructure to support new projects and services.
• Ensure IT systems meet security and compliance standards; plan and execute upgrades, patches, and hardening activities.
• Maintain and administer user accounts, access controls, and application software licenses.
• Conduct regular audits of IT systems and software; maintain an accurate, up-to-date asset register.
• Document policies, procedures, infrastructure, and system configurations to a professional standard.
• Analyze, test, and deploy software patches and updates in a controlled, risk-managed manner.
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to junior team members; contribute to knowledge base articles and training materials.

• Bachelor's degree in a field related to IT, computer science, or telecommunications.
• Juniper Engineer level certification in Routing and Switching (JNCIP) and Network Security (JNCIP-SEC).
• Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE), and Red Hat Certified Specialist in Security certifications.
• At least three years of senior-level experience in systems and network administration, ideally within a 24/7 operations or NOC environment, with demonstrable on-call and shift rotation experience in a mission-critical setting.
• Proven experience in an ISP or carrier-grade networking environment.
• Experience deploying and maintaining virtualized Linux servers (on-premises and cloud).
• Experience designing and implementing secure, robust network architectures including VPNs, VLANs, and firewall configurations; hands-on experience with Cisco, Juniper, and open-source tools such as FRR routing.
• Strong scripting and automation proficiency in Bash, Python, and Ansible.
• Experience with Linux on virtualized platforms (Open Stack, Open Shift, VMware, Microsoft Azure), with strong expertise in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), including Subscriptions, Licensing, IdM Server, and Satellite Server.
• Experience configuring, troubleshooting, and hardening VMs and servers using Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS).
• Hands-on experience with monitoring and observability stacks:
  Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, or Thanos.
• Excellent written and oral English communication skills, including the ability to write clear incident reports and post-mortems.
• Ability to remain composed and make sound decisions under pressure during critical incidents; strong professional relationship skills in a fast-paced, always-on environment.
• Routing & Switching:
  Deep expertise in IP routing and switching, including MPLS, BGP, OSPF, EIGRP, RIP, Multicast, VLANs, Inter-VLANs, Spanning Tree, BFD, VXLAN, eVPN, IS-IS, and VRRP.
• VPN & Security:
  Solid experience with IPSec VPNs, SSL VPNs, and advanced firewall configuration.
• Network Troubleshooting:
  Strong ability to diagnose and resolve complex, time-sensitive networking issues efficiently.
• Systems Administration:
  Installation, configuration, hardening, maintenance, and patching of network and server infrastructure; advanced troubleshooting in disk/storage management including LVM, RAW, XFS, EXT4, and BTRFS.
• Monitoring & Observability:
  Configuring, troubleshooting, and managing systems including Grafana, Prometheus, Elasticsearch, and related tooling.
• Dev Ops Practices:
  Familiarity with Git-based workflows and automated deployment strategies in production environments.
• Cloud certification (Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud) and experience with Terraform or similar IaC tools for cloud provisioning.
• Cybersecurity training and certification (e.g., CompTIA Security+, CISSP).
• Experience contributing to Dev Ops or SRE frameworks, including CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Ansible), and version-controlled configuration management.
• Quality of Service (QoS) configuration on routers, switches, and firewalls.
• Experience with network management tools (e.g., Nagios) and protocols (e.g., SNMP); expertise in authentication technologies, particularly Active Directory and LDAP.
• Familiarity with ITIL or similar service management frameworks relevant to 24/7 operations.