Staff Network Systems Engineer - Santa Clara - (Contract)

What you’ll do:

• Perform day-to-day support and administration of network infrastructure and corporate systems, including installation, configuration, monitoring, documentation, and automation.
• Design, install, configure, and document enterprise-level networks and devices (including but not limited to Cisco 9XXX Catalyst, 38XX switches, Cisco Nexus, 65XX, 45XX, ASA 55XX, Cisco VPN appliances, and Palo Alto Networks next-generation firewalls) according to business requirements.
• Configure and maintain routing and access-layer networks across WAN, LAN, wireless, and data center environments, including dynamic routing protocols such as OSPF, EIGRP, and enterprise-level BGP.
• Analyze and troubleshoot complex network connectivity and performance issues using tools such as Fluke network analyzers and other network analysis utilities.
• Plan, implement, monitor, patch, upgrade, and troubleshoot complex network configurations to meet high availability, security, and performance requirements.
• Implement and support network security policies and technologies, including Palo Alto Networks NGFWs, security policy generation, and Network Access Control solutions (e.g., Forescout, ClearPass, Cisco ISE).
• Plan, implement, and provide primary support for disaster recovery and backup of network infrastructure, ensuring resiliency and recoverability of critical network services.
• Validate network specifications and equipment configurations based on business requirements, engineering solutions for complex networking challenges through detailed analysis.
• Establish and maintain network policies, procedures, and standards, ensuring documentation of processes, configurations, and procedures is accurate and regularly updated.
• Work closely with systems and network engineers, network operations staff, and application development teams to ensure network requirements are understood, planned, and delivered on time.
• Participate in meetings to gather network requirements, develop implementation plans, and review designs and changes with other network engineers and stakeholders.
• Provide responsive customer service to internal stakeholders, facilitating effective collaboration between project teams and end users.
• Participate in a global on-call rotation to support Gigamon’s 24x7 enterprise network environment.

What you’ve done:

• Obtained a bachelor’s degree in computer science or a closely related field from an accredited college or university, or have equivalent practical experience.
• Acquired at least three (3) years of recent experience as a Network Engineer analyzing, installing, configuring, enhancing, and maintaining components of an enterprise network.
• Developed strong knowledge of core hardware and software components that comprise large, complex systems or enterprise networks, including multivendor and multi‑platform environments.
• Applied analysis and evaluation techniques to plan, design, integrate, implement, maintain, and troubleshoot large, complex systems or networks across similar and dissimilar technology platforms.
• Gained hands-on experience designing and implementing networks using dynamic routing protocols (internal and external), including OSPF, EIGRP, and enterprise BGP.
• Supported and optimized high-availability network architectures, including redundancy, failover, and resilient design principles.
• Deployed and managed wireless networks and performance, including wireless deployment planning and optimization.
• Implemented and managed Palo Alto Networks NGFWs and associated security policy design and configuration.
• Worked with Network Access Control technologies such as Forescout, ClearPass, Cisco ISE, or similar platforms.
• Demonstrated working knowledge of SD‑WAN concepts and technologies; direct SD‑WAN deployment experience is a plus.
• Built demonstrable knowledge across all OSI layers, using that understanding to troubleshoot and optimize network behavior end-to-end.
• Used network analysis and diagnostic tools (including Fluke network analyzers or similar) to identify and resolve complex network issues.
• Designed, implemented, and supported disaster recovery, backup strategies, and network security policies for enterprise networks.
• Earned or worked toward relevant industry certifications such as Cisco CCNA Routing and Switching (or equivalent experience).

Who you are:

• You are a self-motivated network professional with strong time management skills and the ability to drive tasks to completion with minimal supervision.
• You have a strong technical aptitude and enjoy researching and solving complex issues independently, while knowing when to collaborate with peers and stakeholders.
• You are comfortable with hands-on work in lab and production environments and are not afraid to “get your hands dirty” debugging and fixing network problems at the hardware and configuration levels.
• You exercise sound judgment, decisiveness, and creativity when designing, planning, troubleshooting, and integrating large, complex systems or networks, always considering potential benefits and consequences.
• You can develop alternative technical solutions within established guidelines and standards, balancing innovation with operational stability and security.
• You communicate clearly and effectively, with the ability to translate complex technical concepts into language understandable to both technical and non-technical audiences, in writing and verbally.
• You build strong working relationships with IS professionals, vendors, management, and cross-functional teams, and you prioritize competing requests for service in a thoughtful, customer-focused manner.
• You stay current with professional journals, manuals, and industry literature, maintaining an ongoing interest in emerging networking and security technologies.

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