Sr Network Engineer

Job-: SC Individual Contributors Exempt

Location:

Grand Rapids, MI, United States

Schedule:

Full time Posted:

Summary:

The Senior Network Engineer (SNE) at National Heritage Academies (NHA) ensures the functionality, stability, and security of NHA's data, voice, and wireless networks and Internet connectivity. The SNE designs, plans, builds, and supports local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs), wireless networks (WLANs), Internet connectivity, voice solutions, and core network services, including DNS and system monitoring, across NHA's school campuses and offices.

The SNE works hands-on with NHA's network platforms, which include Palo Alto Networks firewalls, Ruckus wireless, Arista networking, and Cisco networking. The SNE also supports VPN tunnels, load balancing, and communication links, and resolves hardware and software performance problems quickly and accurately.

Company Information:

National Heritage Academies (NHA) partners with communities to build and operate public charter schools. Founded in 1995, today NHA serves over 100 schools in nine states, with more than 65,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Our schools are designed to eliminate the achievement gap and provide school choice to families so their children are prepared for success in college, career, and life.

A majority of our schools consistently outperform their local district on the state test. According to the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, NHA is a leading performer among charter schools and management organizations, outperforming both conventional district schools and other charter school operators. In addition, according to our employee survey, over 90% of respondents agree that the work they do is meaningful to them.

Join our team.

Duties and Responsibilities:

Network infrastructure

Design, deploy, and replace LAN, WAN, Wi-Fi, firewall, and voice network infrastructure, along with supporting equipment such as UPS units.

Plan and implement hardware, software, and operating system upgrades and patches, including firmware lifecycle management across Arista, Cisco, Ruckus, and Palo Alto platforms.

Configure and maintain Arista and Cisco switching and routing, including VLANs, routing protocols, link aggregation, and redundancy.

Deploy and support Ruckus wireless networks, including controllers, access points, RF planning, and wireless authentication such as 802.1X and certificate-based methods.

Maintain configuration backups and restoration procedures for all network devices.

Manage cellular and backup Internet connectivity and ensure it is used appropriately.

Security Participate in managing and developing NHA's network security solutions, with a security-first approach to protecting student and organizational data.

Administer Palo Alto firewalls, including security policies, NAT, VPN, content and threat prevention, and logging.

Support network segmentation, access control, and compliance requirements related to student data and Internet safety.

DNS management

Administer NHA's DNS infrastructure, including internal and external zones, records, forwarders, and conditional forwarding.

Maintain DNS records accurately and on time as schools, systems, and services are added, moved, or retired.

Coordinate DNS with DHCP and IP address management so that naming and addressing stay consistent across campuses.

Apply DNS security practices, such as restricting zone transfers, monitoring for anomalies, and supporting DNS-based filtering where used.

Troubleshoot name resolution issues, and document DNS standards, zone ownership, and change procedures.

Work with vendors and registrars on domain and external DNS changes as needed.

System monitoring

Design, deploy, and maintain monitoring and alerting for network devices, firewalls, wireless systems, DNS services, circuits, and supporting infrastructure such as UPS units.

Track availability, utilization, latency, and error rates, and set thresholds and alerts that surface problems before they affect schools.

Collect and review logs and events from Palo Alto, Ruckus, Arista, and Cisco platforms, and escalate security-relevant findings.

Tune monitoring to reduce false alarms and keep monitored devices and alert contacts current as sites and equipment change.

Use monitoring data for capacity planning, lifecycle planning, trend analysis, and root-cause reviews after incidents.

Produce regular performance and availability reports for leadership.

Operations and support

Serve as the…