Sr. SolarWinds Platform Engineer

Senior Solar Winds Platform Engineer

AEP is seeking an experienced Senior Solar Winds Platform Engineer who is responsible for the design, administration, automation, integration, and support of AEP's enterprise Solar Winds monitoring platform. This role serves as the technical subject matter expert for Solar Winds Network Performance Monitor (NPM), Network Configuration Manager (NCM), Network Insight, network availability monitoring, device lifecycle management, reporting, alerting, and monitoring automation.

The engineer will design and maintain enterprise network monitoring solutions across routers, switches, firewalls, VPN infrastructure, telecommunications environments, and critical network services while driving monitoring modernization, operational efficiencies, platform reliability, automation initiatives, and monitoring data quality improvements. The position requires deep technical expertise in network monitoring, SNMP, Solar Winds administration, Power Shell automation, Service Now integrations, network device onboarding, reporting development, and enterprise infrastructure operations.

Solar Winds Platform Administration:

• Administer and support Solar Winds production, development, and laboratory environments.
• Maintain platform health, performance, availability, and resiliency.
• Perform platform upgrades, patching, maintenance, and lifecycle management.
• Troubleshoot platform-related issues involving polling engines, web servers, databases, monitoring services, and infrastructure dependencies.
• Provide Level 3 support for enterprise Solar Winds monitoring solutions.

Network Monitoring Engineering:

• Design, implement, and maintain monitoring solutions for routers, switches, firewalls, WAN infrastructure, VPN services, and critical network devices.
• Develop monitoring standards, alerting strategies, discovery processes, and onboarding procedures.
• Ensure complete device and interface monitoring coverage across enterprise environments.
• Partner with Network Operations and Engineering teams to improve network visibility and operational readiness.
• Reduce monitoring gaps and improve monitoring effectiveness.

Device Lifecycle Management:

• Manage network device onboarding, validation, updates, and decommissioning activities.
• Maintain accurate monitoring inventories, IP addressing, device classifications, and naming conventions.
• Reconcile Solar Winds inventories with CMDB and authoritative asset sources.
• Support enterprise monitoring remediation and inventory management initiatives.
• Develop standards for onboarding and monitoring governance.

Alerting, Dashboards & Reporting:

• Build and maintain operational dashboards and executive reporting solutions.
• Develop network availability, utilization, performance, and compliance reporting.
• Create automated report generation and distribution processes.
• Design actionable alerts to reduce noise and improve incident response effectiveness.
• Support stakeholder reporting requirements and visibility initiatives.

Service Now and Enterprise Integrations:

• Design and support integration between Solar Winds and Service Now.
• Support device onboarding workflows and monitoring request processes.
• Troubleshoot onboarding failures relating to DNS, firewall rules, CMDB data, SNMP communication, and discovery issues.
• Improve end-to-end monitoring automation and operational workflows.
• Support enterprise monitoring modernization initiatives.

Automation & Continuous Improvement:

• Develop Power Shell automation solutions for platform administration.
• Automate device onboarding, inventory updates, interface maintenance, and reporting processes.
• Eliminate manual administrative tasks through repeatable automated workflows.
• Improve operational efficiency through process standardization and automation.
• Drive Solar Winds platform enhancement initiatives.

Platform Architecture & Modernization:

• Participate in architecture, design, and deployment of new Solar Winds environments.
• Define server, database, storage, network, and firewall requirements.
• Support high availability and disaster recovery designs.
• Partner with vendors and architecture teams to implement future-state monitoring solutions.
• Participate in platform roadmap and modernization initiatives.

Production Operations Support:

• Participate in on-call rotation and enterprise incident response activities.
• Support monitoring platforms providing visibility into critical network services.
• Investigate monitoring failures and implement corrective actions.
• Serve as a technical escalation point for Solar Winds-related incidents.
• Coordinate issue resolution with infrastructure teams, vendors, and operations partners.

Governance, Risk & Compliance:

• Support monitoring solutions subject to NERC CIP, audit, and compliance requirements.
• Maintain operational procedures, documentation, standards, and support artifacts.
• Support audit evidence collection and remediation activities.
• Ensure monitoring platforms align with cybersecurity, change management, and operational standards.
• Protect…