USM Office
Senior Wide Area Network Engineer
Adelphi, Maryland, United States · Senior
Sponsorship not specifiedDetected 16 days ago
C++BashMySQLLinuxCustomer SupportTCP/IPDNSCiscoBGP/OSPFWiresharkNetwork MonitoringNetwork EngineeringWordPressResearchLeadershipCommunicationCollaboration
About the role
- This role offers the opportunity to help shape and strengthen a complex statewide network environment that underpins critical academic and institutional operations.
- Ensures high availability, performance, and resilience across all backbone and interconnection services.
- Responds to and corrects problems within the MDREN network.
Responsibilities
- The work spans core infrastructure, long-range network evolution, and close collaboration with institutional and partner stakeholders to support resilient, high-performance services.
- As Senior Wide Area Network Engineer, you will provide technical leadership across MDREN's statewide network environment, helping guide the design, operation, and continued evolution of WAN and optical transport infrastructure.
- Maintains and operates MDREN's statewide wide area network (WAN) infrastructure, including core, edge, and optical transport layers.
- Maintains related computer systems, software packages, and network appliances in support of the network.
- Develops implementation plans and schedules.
- Develops and maintains documentation, policies, procedures, and methods for the operation of the MDREN network.
- Designs, engineers, and maintains MDREN's statewide WAN, including backbone, regional aggregation, and partner interconnects.
- Leads architecture and deployment of dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) optical transport systems, including wavelength services, reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM) configurations, and optical path engineering.
- Engineers and supports high-capacity backbone upgrades (100G/400G and beyond).
- Supports and contributes to MDREN's web presence by maintaining accurate, up-to-date technical content related to network services, infrastructure status, and member resources.
Requirements
- 7 years' experience in the networking field with increasing responsibility.
- Experience in changing and evolving environments.
- Experience supervising staff.
- Required Knowledge/Skills/Abilities: Ability to establish goals, priorities, structures, and processes necessary to implement a complex network infrastructure.
- Must be skilled as a technical troubleshooter with the ability to think logically to define and solve problems, collect data, establish facts, and draw valid conclusions.
- Strong interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills with the ability to communicate complex network issues or strategies to audiences with varying network knowledge or experience.
- Must be able to work in a collaborative, team environment.
- Proactively monitors all enterprise communication systems for proper, stable operation, taking appropriate corrective action if required.
Nice to have
- Preferred Experience: Experience working for an Internet Service Provider (ISP) or similar business.
- Outside fiber plant experience.
- Skill in performing packet capture and analysis using tools such as Wireshark.
- Knowledge of optical networking technologies, including transponders, muxponders, and ROADMs.
- Knowledge of optical transport and amplification technologies, including Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA) and Raman amplification.
- Knowledge of optical channel planning and wavelength management concepts.
- Knowledge of multi-domain network architectures and interconnection models, including REN and ISP peering.
- Skill in Unix/Linux system administration, including configuration and management of DNS (BIND), web servers (e.g., Apache), databases (e.g., MySQL), backups, and software package management.
Skills
- Identifies and evaluates emerging technologies and best practices to enhance network capabilities.
- Researches new technologies, tools, and methodologies relevant to enterprise and research network environments.
- Evaluates and recommends improvements to network architecture, performance, and security.
- Supports long-term strategic planning for network evolution.
- Annual Salary $160,500-$182,000
- Leadership and teambuilding skills to strengthen and cultivate relationships to internal and external institutions.
- Ability to prioritize ongoing and new projects, as well as conduct research and gather information.
- Knowledgeable in use of network management and command language and graphical analysis tools.
- On-hands experience with Cisco/Juniper/Brocade/Arista switches and routers.
- Demonstrated skill in programming in more than one language.
- Must be a "self-starter" and be able to proactively identify problems (or potential problems) and propose solutions.
- Skill in analyzing network traffic using flow technologies such as Cisco NetFlow, Juniper JFlow, and sFlow.
Benefits
- Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with flexible spending accounts.
- Retirement Plans: Mandatory and supplemental options with major providers like Fidelity and TIAA.
- Life Insurance: Optional term life and AD&D benefits through MetLife.
- Tuition remission for employees and their families.
- Training & Development: Free professional development conferences and unlimited LinkedIn Learning access.
- Within this environment, MDREN plays an important role in enabling reliable, high-capacity connectivity that supports research, education, and collaboration across institutions and partner networks.
- Collaborates with member institutions and partner research and education networks (RENs) on interconnection design and capacity planning.
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This listing is sourced directly from USM Office's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.