Electric Utility Network Administrator

Overview

As a community owned, not-for-profit municipal electric utility, Silicon Valley Power (SVP) has been providing dependable electric service to the City of Santa Clara residents and businesses since 1896. SVP is the only full service, vertically integrated publicly owned utility in Silicon Valley owning generation, transmission and distribution assets. SVP is not driven by profits, reflected in its significantly lower utility rates when compared to other private sector utilities.

SVP is dedicated to our community, customers, and employees, providing safe, reliable, affordable, and sustainable energy services with exceptional customer focus.

Today, SVP owns, operates, and participates in more than 2,000 MW of electric generating resources delivering 4,800 GWh of electricity. SVP is growing due to data center expansion, high density developments and electrification initiatives. SVP’s peak load will be increasing from 700 MW to 1300 MW in the next 5-10 years. To accommodate future growth, SVP is implementing a $400 million system expansion and aging infrastructure replacement plan.

This is a professional position in the classified service assigned to the City of Santa Clara’s Electric Utility Department, Silicon Valley Power (SVP). This position works directly for SVP’s Systems Support Group (SSG), the technology backbone of SVP. SSG is a growing division that directly supports a large range of technology projects and modernization efforts within SVP, including activities in support of the unprecedented load growth of the Utility.

We are seeking a highly skilled Network Administrator to design, implement, and support both enterprise and utility-specific network infrastructure, with a strong emphasis on Cisco technologies. The incumbent plays a critical role in ensuring the availability, performance, and security of the organization’s overall network environment, including SVP’s utility communication and control systems.

In this role, the Network Administrator is responsible for administering and monitoring network services, managing a variety of advanced network and security products—including Cisco firewalls and intrusion prevention systems—and maintaining compliance with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) requirements as well as applicable state and local mandates. This position involves supporting and maintaining complex infrastructure components such as enterprise-grade Cisco firewalls, routers, switches, wireless controllers (e.g., HP Aruba switches), and RSA Authentication Manager, while also managing secure VPN access and routing protocols and future state zero trust network access initiatives.

The incumbent will oversee DNS infrastructure, support VoIP systems to ensure call quality and reliability, and proactively monitor network performance to detect and resolve issues related to connectivity, latency, or system failures. The role also requires accurate documentation of network configurations and changes, collaboration with internal teams on infrastructure projects and upgrades, and participation in organizational capacity planning.

In addition, this position supports business continuity by ensuring high availability and disaster recovery capabilities across all network components, investigates and reports on security incidents in accordance with departmental policy or direction from senior management, and provides technical leadership and mentorship to others.

Education and Experience

Bachelor’s Degree from an accredited college or university with coursework in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field.

Minimum Experience Requirements:

• Five (5) years of network operations and administration experience in Utility Operations and/or Electric Scheduling or the equivalent, including experience in utility cyber security and facility security.
• Three (3) years of the required experience must have been in a lead position; and
• Three (3) years of the required experience must include operations and maintenance level experience with Synchronous Optical Networking (SONET) equipment installed in utility applications.

Acceptable…