Senior Network Engineer; Hands-On Technical Lead

Senior Network Engineer (Hands-On Technical Lead)

Location: Santa Clara, CA (Onsite)

Travel: Occasional travel to remote company sites

We are seeking a Senior Network Engineer (Hands-On Technical Lead) to own and operate our enterprise network infrastructure across corporate offices, manufacturing facilities, and Azure cloud environments.

This role is responsible for the design, implementation, security, and operational reliability of the company’s network and firewall infrastructure. The position functions as both a network architect and senior technical operator, providing Tier-3 support and ensuring high availability for mission-critical 24/7 manufacturing systems.

The engineer in this role will work closely with Cybersecurity, Dev Ops, Software Engineering, IAM, Automation, and IT Operations teams while maintaining strong relationships with vendors, partners, and internal stakeholders.

This is a high-impact technical leadership role reporting directly to the CIO.

• Architect, deploy, and support Cisco Catalyst 9000 switching environments including VLANs, L2/L3 routing, LACP, and gateway redundancy.
• Design and maintain enterprise routing infrastructure including BGP, OSPF, WAN failover, and redundancy strategies.
• Manage enterprise IP addressing standards, subnet allocation, NAT policies and network segmentation.
• Maintain and operate air-gapped network environments requiring strict isolation and security controls.
• Design and manage DMZ architectures and partner network interfaces.

• Engineer and maintain Palo Alto next-generation firewall platforms including App-, User-, Content-, IPS/IDS, SSL decryption, and threat prevention.
• Manage site-to-site VPNs, remote access VPN (Global Protect), and high-availability firewall clusters.
• Support Zero Trust network models including Zscaler ZIA and ZPA environments.

• Virtual WAN (vWAN)
• Hub-and-spoke networks
• VNet peering and routing
• Configure and manage Application Gateway (WAF), Load Balancers, Traffic Manager
• Implement network segmentation using NSGs, ASGs, Private Endpoints, and Private DNS.

• Build and maintain Terraform modules for Azure network infrastructure.
• Manage Terraform state, environments and version control workflows.
• Enforce Azure governance policies and configuration compliance.

• Provide Tier-3 escalation support for network incidents across switching, routing, firewall, WAN and cloud infrastructure.
• Perform packet captures, log analysis, traffic flow analysis and root cause investigations.
• Lead incident resolution and produce Root Cause Analysis documentation.
• Maintain service levels and operational stability for 24/7 manufacturing operations.

• Own IDF/MDF design, rack layout, cabling strategy and patching standards.
• Coordinate with ISPs, cabling vendors and field technicians during installations and upgrades.
• Support infrastructure upgrades, site buildouts and network expansion projects.

• Maintain detailed documentation including network diagrams, rack elevations, operational runbooks.
• Manage firmware updates, patch cycles and lifecycle planning for network infrastructure.
• Follow established change management processes and deployment validation procedures.

• 7+ years of hands‑on network engineering experience supporting enterprise infrastructure.
• Deep experience with Cisco enterprise switching and routing platforms.
• Strong operational experience with Palo Alto firewalls.
• Experience designing and operating hybrid cloud networks in Microsoft Azure.
• Hands‑on experience with Terraform or other infrastructure‑as‑code tools.
• Strong troubleshooting experience across routing, switching, firewall and WAN infrastructure.
• Experience supporting high‑availability environments and critical infrastructure systems.
• Ability to work onsite and perform physical infrastructure tasks (rack/stack, cabling, equipment installation).
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to collaborate effectively across multiple…