Principal Network Engineer

Principal Network Engineer Job Description

GDIT is seeking a Principal Network Engineer to join our JSP ETM-NG (Joint Service Provider Enterprise Transport Management - Next Gen) team. Due to the nature of this role, the employee must report full‑time onsite at the Pentagon, Arlington, VA.

As a Principal Network Engineer you will provide technical leadership, oversight, and direction to the Core Transport Network Engineering team and mentor and instruct network engineers on best practices and the execution of network enhancements, upgrades, and troubleshooting efforts in a large and complex network environment. You will be responsible for the health and maintenance of a large, complex networking infrastructure, providing support to more than 8,000 networked devices.

The Principal Network Engineer will provide comprehensive network administration, security enhancements and remediation, and troubleshooting of network devices such as routers, switches, load balancers, VPNs, 802.11 wireless, and VoIP. This position requires an understanding of best practices pertaining to network security and may require the development, deployment, and integration of network security services. This position is 5 days a week, on‑site at the Pentagon during core hours from 7am–3:30pm.

• Act as a subject‑matter expert to network routing and switching, as well as network performance monitoring and troubleshooting.
• Review completion and implementation of system additions and/or enhancements and make recommendations to management and/or clients.
• Evaluate new application, infrastructure, and cloud decisions in the existing context of applications, infrastructure, standards, current business strategy and future business strategy.
• Determine system specifications, input/output processes, and working parameters for hardware/software compatibility.
• Provide guidance and work leadership to less‑experienced IT staff and may have supervisory responsibilities.
• Serve as liaison with senior clients, participating in meetings to ensure client needs are met.
• Provide problem and incident resolution, including dealing with software and hardware vendor technical support.
• Deploy and maintain network hardware, peripherals, services, and settings in accordance with industry standards and project/operational requirements.
• Perform daily system monitoring; verify the integrity and availability of networking hardware, services, systems, and key processes; review system and application logs.
• Document and conduct changes during ASI windows.
• Provide leadership in on‑call troubleshooting and issue resolution as required.
• Develop and maintain installation and configuration procedures.
• Collaborate with the Security team to identify and remediate application and operating system vulnerabilities.
• Develop scripts and other automation solutions to aid in the completion of migration and integration tasks.

• Education:
  
  Bachelor’s Degree in a related field (or 4 years of experience may be substituted in lieu of a degree).
• Security clearance:
  Active Top Secret required with the ability to obtain SCI; current Top Secret/SCI level must be held.
• Experience:
  
  8+ years of related experience in network engineering (Cisco and Juniper routers and switches, SDN, routing protocols, etc.).
• Certifications:
  
  Current IAT Level II certification required; must also possess one or more active network certifications: CCNA, CCNP or ACSA.
• Must be willing to work on‑site at the Pentagon 5 days a week during core hours (7am–3:30pm).
• Expert knowledge of information technology principles, methods, and techniques.
• Extensive experience troubleshooting, managing, and monitoring the health of Cisco and Juniper routers and switches.
• Extensive experience in Software Defined Networks (SDN) and understanding of network infrastructure topologies, security policies, firewalls, and L2/L3 switch and router infrastructure.
• Experience deploying, managing, and troubleshooting networking systems and routing protocol standards such as TCP/IP, MPLS, OSPF, BGP, SDN, and 802.1x.
• Experience managing and troubleshooting DNS, DHCP, IPAM, and NTP in a large multi‑site environment.
• Experience with…