Principal Network Engineer

We welcome individual candidates and Corp-to-Corp (CTC) resume submissions.

6-month contract – Hybrid 3 days per week onsite

Candidate must live within 50 miles of Evansville, IN, Baltimore, MD, or Charlotte, NC

We are seeking a Lead
Principal Network Engineer
to help our direct client. This is a Hybrid position working onsite 3 days per week.
Must live within 50 miles of Evansville, IN, Baltimore, MD, or Charlotte, NC.

This is a senior individual contributor role serving as the technical lead for enterprise network operations across cloud, hybrid cloud, on-premise, and application delivery infrastructure. This is not a traditional routing and switching role.
The focus is on application delivery, reliability, redundancy, and optimization — making sure traffic gets where it needs to go, stays available, and performs well.

When a system fails and no one has documented the original design, this is the person who reverse-engineers the communication path and restores service. The role requires an automation-first mindset, treats documentation as non-negotiable, and expects someone who can navigate ambiguity without waiting for a playbook.

This position typically operates as a team of one, but for larger initiatives you’ll coordinate with engineers borrowed from Dev Ops, Network Security, and other teams for periods ranging from weeks to months. You’ll need to delegate effectively, maintain quality oversight, and keep projects on schedule.

The split is roughly 85% proactive work (architecture, automation, roadmaps, standards) and 15% reactive incident response.
When incidents happen, time-to-resolution is the metric that matters.

Responsibilities:

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Serve as the organization’s subject matter expert for network infrastructure across AWS, Azure, and on-premise environments.

• Own application delivery and reliability strategy with a focus on DNS, global traffic management (GSLB), and load balancing — this role is more about ensuring applications are reachable, redundant, and performant than configuring switch ports.

• Take abstract business requests and translate them into detailed technical roadmaps with clear milestones and deliverables.

• Evaluate network products and platforms to prevent overlapping tool purchases or redundant capabilities. Know your open-source alternatives — they frequently outperform commercial products in flexibility.

• Maintain working relationships with vendor sales engineers and stay current on product roadmaps, forecasts, and industry trends without treating analyst reports as gospel.

Automation & Engineering

• Develop and maintain automation using Python, Bash, Ansible, Terraform, and Git Hub Actions following a Git Ops model.

• Manage secrets and credentials across Hashi Corp Vault, Azure Key Vault, and AWS Secrets Manager.

• Build and improve self-service tooling and workflows that reduce manual effort and improve operational consistency.

• Use emerging tools, including AI-assisted development, to accelerate complex task completion.

Troubleshooting & Incident Response

• Troubleshoot from Layer 7 backward through the full network stack, particularly in environments where the original design was undocumented. When a developer or engineer failed to document a service and it breaks, you will likely be the first person called to reverse-engineer the communication.

• Read and interpret packet captures (Wireshark) and browser HAR files to isolate issues at the application and transport layers.

• Work through problems when standard troubleshooting tools are unavailable due to security controls. We need someone who can find the next link in the chain using whatever tools are at hand, not someone whose toolkit stops at ping and trace route.

• Approach troubleshooting methodically: observe symptoms, form a hypothesis, test one variable at a time, document findings, and iterate. No shotgun debugging.

• Serve as secondary on-call (24/7/365) when the primary on-call engineer is blocked or unable to resolve.

Cross-Functional Leadership & Communication

• Lead borrowed engineers (senior and junior) from adjacent teams on project-based work, maintaining quality standards and keeping deliverables on schedule.

• Men…