WAN Lead Network Engineer

Onsite, Fairfax County, Virginia Onsite full time Full-time · $100-$120/hour

The WAN Lead Network Engineer serves as the senior technical authority for the design and implementation of a global, mission-critical wide area network connecting distributed operational facilities.

This customer-facing leadership role owns WAN architecture decisions, drives implementation through acceptance, leads a distributed team of seven network engineers, and partners closely with program engineering, test, and quality teams.

• Own the end-to-end WAN architecture, technical baseline, and design standards from initial development through implementation and formal acceptance.
• Design and lead implementation of resilient wide area connectivity for distributed reference sites, processing facilities, remote locations, and satellite ground-segment infrastructure.
• Lead, mentor, and coordinate a team of seven network engineers working across domestic and international time zones.
• Serve as the primary technical interface for customer stakeholders and engineering leadership, presenting recommendations, resolving concerns, and maintaining alignment on design decisions.
• Review and approve network designs, configurations, implementation plans, and engineering deliverables for technical quality and consistency.
• Provide deep technical direction across BGP, OSPF, MPLS, SD-WAN, IPsec, GRE, QoS, redundancy, and high-availability architectures.
• Drive implementation planning, integration, troubleshooting, risk management, and corrective action through successful delivery.
• Partner with systems test and quality assurance teams to ensure requirements are verifiable, test procedures reflect the approved design, and the network satisfies acceptance criteria.
• Coordinate technical work across multiple time zones and provide leadership during critical implementation, integration, and test windows.

• Ten or more years of progressive network engineering experience, including senior ownership of complex enterprise, carrier, government, or mission-critical WAN environments.
• Demonstrated experience leading WAN architecture and implementation from design development through integration, testing, and acceptance.
• Expert-level knowledge of BGP, OSPF, MPLS, SD-WAN, IPsec, GRE, QoS, high availability, routing policy, and resilient network design.
• Experience designing connectivity for geographically distributed sites, constrained remote environments, or similarly complex operational facilities.
• Proven ability to lead and develop distributed engineering teams while reviewing and approving high-quality technical output.
• Strong customer-facing communication skills with experience explaining architecture decisions, technical risk, tradeoffs, and implementation status to senior stakeholders.
• Experience partnering with test and quality teams to establish verifiable designs, resolve defects, and complete formal acceptance.
• Ability to work onsite full time in Fairfax County, Virginia, and support occasional off-hours coordination across international time zones.
• Must be a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident with a valid green card.

• Network engineering experience in satellite ground-station environments, including uplink facilities and remote-site connectivity.
• Current or previous expert-level networking certification such as CCIE or JNCIE, or equivalent demonstrated technical depth.
• Experience serving as a lead technical authority, deputy engineering lead, or principal customer-facing network architect.
• Familiarity with formal requirements verification, configuration management, and government engineering delivery environments.

• Full-time onsite position in Fairfax County, Virginia.
• Contract engagement at $100-$120 per hour.
• No security clearance is required.
• Schedule flexibility is required for coordination with engineering teams and technical activities across multiple time zones.