Network Automation Engineer

Zachary Piper Solutions is seeking a Network Automation Engineer to support a long-term DOD program focused on enterprise network automation, management, and reliability. This position is 100% onsite with opportunities in Norfolk, VA;
Jacksonville, FL; or Pearl Harbor, HI
. The Network Automation Engineer will support a large-scale, multivendor enterprise network by combining network engineering expertise with automation, Network Management Systems (NMS), and Linux infrastructure administration. This role will focus on automating network configuration and provisioning, administering enterprise NMS platforms, optimizing network infrastructure, and improving operational reliability across a distributed environment.

Responsibilities of the Network Automation Engineer include:

• Support and administer large-scale, multivendor enterprise network environments spanning Cisco, Arista, Brocade, Juniper, McAfee, and other network technologies
• Support the lifecycle management, configuration, provisioning, maintenance, and troubleshooting of enterprise network devices
• Analyze and troubleshoot complex routing, switching, network connectivity, and infrastructure issues across distributed environments
• Support enterprise firewalls, Access Control Lists (ACLs), and network security controls
• Develop and implement automated network configuration and provisioning workflows
• Develop, test, and deploy Ansible playbooks for network automation and infrastructure management
• Use Python, Power Shell, and YAML to automate network operations, configuration management, and repetitive engineering tasks
• Develop automated policy enforcement mechanisms across enterprise network infrastructure
• Automate network node provisioning, configuration deployment, validation, and lifecycle management
• Implement configuration management processes designed to improve consistency, compliance, and operational reliability
• Support configuration backups, configuration validation, drift detection, remediation, and mass configuration changes
• Administer and support enterprise Network Management Systems (NMS) including Cisco Catalyst Center, Open Text Network Automation, Open Text NNMi, and Arista Cloud Vision
• Deploy, configure, upgrade, troubleshoot, and optimize NMS applications and supporting infrastructure
• Support integration between NMS platforms, network devices, CMDBs, and ITSM platforms such as Service Now
• Configure and troubleshoot network monitoring and telemetry using SNMP, Syslog, Net Flow, IPFIX, ICMP, SSH, and related protocols
• Develop and maintain NMS polling, alerting, threshold, fault-management, and network performance monitoring capabilities
• Analyze network telemetry and monitoring data to identify performance issues, configuration problems, outages, and other infrastructure anomalies
• Perform root-cause analysis and fault isolation across complex network and NMS environments
• Support network performance optimization through proactive monitoring, analysis, and tuning
• Administer RHEL 8 systems supporting enterprise NMS applications and network management infrastructure
• Provision, configure, patch, secure, and troubleshoot RHEL 8 servers across physical, virtual, and air-gapped environments
• Perform Linux kernel, memory, storage, and file system tuning to support high-volume network telemetry and NMS workloads
• Manage Linux storage using LVM and support capacity planning for NMS databases, logs, and telemetry data
• Utilize Red Hat Satellite and/or enterprise repositories to manage operating system patches and security updates
• Support Linux security hardening and DISA STIG compliance across NMS infrastructure
• Support modern NMS deployments utilizing Kubernetes and containerized infrastructure
• Develop and maintain technical documentation, automation…