Principal Network Engineer – Routing and Switching

Grow, innovate, and generate progress:
Harness your expertise to solve challenges and celebrate success!

JCS Solutions is seeking a Principal Network Engineer specializing in Routing and Switching to serve as the senior technical authority for a large-scale enterprise network supporting a Department of Defense environment. This role is responsible for advancing network innovation through strategic design, modernization, and implementation efforts that improve network security, scalability, resiliency, and performance.

Location: Ft. Meade, MD

Clearance: Secret

Salary:$ - $

Certification: Active DoD 8140/8570 IAT Level II certification.

• Join a premier technology firm specializing in innovative solutions.
• Be part of a collaborative, inclusive, and innovative work culture.
• Enjoy tremendous growth potential in a high-performing team environment.
• A robust benefits package:
  • Health, dental, and vision insurance
  • Life insurance
  • Short-and-long term disability
  • Paid time off (PTO)
  • 401k retirement plan with employer match
  • Annual Professional Development Reimbursement Program
  • And more!

• Own the enterprise routing and switching architecture, including core, distribution, access, WAN edge, and data center interconnect designs.
• Define routing architecture and policy standards across BGP, OSPF, EIGRP, and static routing environments.
• Develop addressing strategies, route filtering and summarization standards, redistribution boundaries, convergence targets, and path-selection policies.
• Define Layer 2 and high-availability architectures, including VLAN strategy, spanning-tree design, link aggregation, VRFs, multicast, segmentation, redundancy models, and QoS policies.
• Evaluate current network architectures and identify opportunities to improve performance, scalability, resiliency, and operational efficiency.
• Establish and enforce network design standards, configuration baselines, and architectural patterns.

• Lead network engineering projects from planning through implementation.
• Perform architecture reviews, requirements analysis, dependency identification, implementation planning, execution oversight, validation, and operational transition activities.
• Develop implementation plans, schedules, cutover procedures, rollback plans, contingency procedures, and validation methodologies.
• Lead network modernization initiatives involving segmentation, IPv4/IPv6 transition, network optimization, lifecycle replacement, connectivity consolidation, automation, and software-defined networking adoption.
• Coordinate maintenance windows, testing events, deployment activities, and rollback execution for mission-critical network changes.
• Collaborate with network architects, cybersecurity teams, operations personnel, project managers, and technical subject matter experts to deliver complex infrastructure initiatives.

• Serve as the final escalation point for complex routing, switching, transport, convergence, and network performance issues.
• Provide technical direction, mentoring, and day-to-day guidance to network engineers, administrators, and analysts.
• Review engineering designs and implementation activities to ensure technical quality and architectural compliance.
• Manage competing priorities and concurrent engineering efforts while maintaining accountability for successful delivery.
• Improve engineering processes, implementation playbooks, runbooks, technical standards, documentation practices, and operational transition procedures.

• Develop and maintain logical and physical network architecture diagrams.
• Create routing standards, policy documentation, address plans, and configuration baselines.
• Develop implementation plans, testing procedures, validation criteria, and rollback documentation.
• Maintain risk assessments, decision registers, dependency tracking documents, technical standards, and runbooks.
• Produce as-built documentation and operational transition packages.

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience with 12+ years of relevant experience, or Master's degree with 10+ years of experience.
• Specific experience, education, and training may be considered in lieu of a degree.
• Active DoD Secret security clearance.
• Current DoD 8140/8570 IAT Level II certification or higher.
• Significant experience designing and implementing network security architecture in complex, large-scale enterprise environments.
• Experience serving as a senior technical lead…