Network & Systems Engineer

Posting Title

Network & Systems Engineer

CO - Golden

Regular

40

NREL is located at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Golden, Colorado is the nation's primary laboratory for energy systems research and development.

Join NREL, where world-class scientists, engineers, and experts are accelerating energy innovation through breakthrough research and systems integration. From our mission to our collaborative culture, NREL stands out in the research community for its commitment to an affordable and secure energy future. Spanning foundational science to applied systems engineering and analysis, we focus on solving complex challenges to deliver advanced, secure, reliable, and cost-effective energy solutions.

Our work helps strengthen U.S. industries, support job creation, and promote national economic growth.

At NREL, you’ll find a mission-driven environment supported by state-of-the-art facilities, multidisciplinary research teams, and strong collaborations with industry, academia, and other national laboratories. We offer robust professional development opportunities, and a competitive benefits package designed to support your career and well-being.

NREL is seeking a mid-career Network & Systems Engineer to join its Cybersecurity Research Center (CRC). The CRC conducts applied research at the intersection of cybersecurity, energy systems, national resilience, and data‑centric research infrastructure—developing the tools, architectures, methods, and scientific foundations required to secure and sustain the nation’s evolving energy infrastructure.

CRC research and experimentation spans secure network and system architecture, adversarial and defensive cybersecurity experimentation, operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS), network and system modeling, database and data workflow management, hardware/software assurance, and cyber‑physical resilience testing. Working across NREL’s energy, grid, and systems integration missions, the CRC leverages unique laboratory assets—including the ARIES Cyber Range—to build, operate, and evaluate large‑scale, high‑fidelity cyber‑physical research environments.

We are seeking a technically strong and research‑focused systems professional who can design, build, and manage secure research infrastructures while enabling controlled adversarial experimentation, threat emulation, and cybersecurity evaluation. The successful candidate will bring depth in one or more areas such as network engineering, systems administration, programming/automation, database management, cybersecurity, data center operations, or systems architecture. This individual will collaborate with researchers conducting adversarial experiments and will help translate research requirements into reproducible, secure, and high‑performance computing environments.

• Lead the architecture, deployment, and evolution of secure hybrid IT/OT research platforms and data center environments.
• Serve as technical authority for virtualization, containerization, automation, and data services, guiding platform strategy and lifecycle decisions.
• Architect and implement automation frameworks and tooling that scale across research projects and organizational environments.
• Establish data management strategies, including database architecture, governance practices, and analytics infrastructure.
• Develop zero‑trust and defense‑in‑depth security architectures and evaluate emerging technologies for adoption.
• Lead major technical initiatives, establish system standards, and resolve highly complex technical and operational issues.
• Represent the organization as a primary technical point of contact with partners, sponsors, and senior leadership.
• Mentor staff, lead capability development, and contribute to long‑range planning of cyber range and research computing resources.

• Design, implement, and administer secure hybrid IT/OT network and system architectures to support cyber and energy experimentation projects.
• Configure, deploy, and manage systems, networks, virtualization platforms…