Senior IT Network Engineer

NAVA Software is looking for a Senior IT Network Engineer

Details:

Title: Senior IT Network Engineer

Duration: 6 months contract to hire

Location: Houston TX - Onsite required 3x week

Fortinet Firewalls & switches and BGP routing skills are absolute MUST HAVES

Seeking an experienced Senior IT Network Engineer with deep expertise in designing deploying operating and troubleshooting enterprise addition to the usual responsibilities expected of a high-level network engineer this role demands hands-on experience with Fortinet firewalls and switches and strong BGP routing ideal candidate will serve as one of the top technical authorities in our networking team mentor junior engineers influence architecture decisions and participate in strategic infrastructure planning.

Key Responsibilities

• Design deploy and maintain scalable reliable network architectures (LAN WAN data center campus).
• Configure manage and troubleshoot Fortinet (FortiGate FortiSwitch etc.) firewall and switch appliances across multiple sites.
• Implement monitor and optimize BGP routing (both internal BGP and external BGP peering) in multi-homed and large-scale environments.
• Lead network upgrades migrations and refresh projects (hardware firmware topology).
• Develop and enforce best practices for network security segmentation high availability redundancy QoS and traffic engineering.
• Work closely with security teams to integrate network and security policy (firewall rules VPNs IPS/IDS etc.).
• Perform root-cause analysis of complex network incidents; produce post-mortems document findings propose improvements.
• Mentor and coach junior network engineers; lead knowledge-sharing sessions and internal training.
• Stay abreast of industry trends emerging protocols and best practices; evaluate new network technologies and vendors.
• Participate in capacity planning forecasting budgeting documentation and procurement of network gear.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (systems cloud applications operations) to ensure network alignment with business goals.

Required Qualifications & Skills

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science Information Technology or related field (or equivalent experience).
• 7 years of experience as a network engineer in enterprise environments.
• Strong hands-on experience with Fortinet appliances including FortiGate firewalls FortiSwitch switches and associated Fortinet ecosystem tools (e.g. FortiManager FortiAnalyzer etc.).
• Deep understanding and real-world experience with BGP routing including:
  • eBGP and iBGP peering
  • Route reflection route maps policy control
  • Path manipulation prefix filtering communities AS-path prepending
  • Troubleshooting BGP convergence and route flapping
• Solid proficiency with other routing and switching protocols: OSPF EIGRP ISIS MPLS VLANs STP EtherChannel etc.
• Experience with network redundancy failover link aggregation load balancing.
• Strong firewall rule design NAT VPN (site-to-site remote access) and security policy implementation.
• Proficiency in network monitoring telemetry logging alerting (e.g. SNMP NetFlow sFlow syslog etc.).
• Scripting or automation skills (Python Ansible etc.) to assist in network provisioning audits and repetitive tasks.
• Strong troubleshooting skills with a methodical approach to diagnosing complex network issues.
• Excellent communication skills both verbal and written for interacting with technical teams stakeholders and vendors.
• Ability to lead projects make architectural decisions and work under pressure.

Preferred / Bonus Skills

• Certifications: Fortinet NSE (especially NSE 4 5 6) Cisco CCNP/CCIE Juniper JNCIP/Expert etc.
• Experience in cloud networking (AWS Azure GCP) and hybrid network design.
• Familiarity with SD-WAN segment routing software-defined networking (SDN).
• Experience with automation/orchestration frameworks (e.g. using APIs Terraform etc.).
• Experience with network security technologies (IDS/IPS next-gen firewall features DDoS mitigation).