Senior Network Architect (SME)

Job Title - Senior Network Architect (SME)

Location - Cambridge, MA 02142

Term - Contract

Experience in Meraki, Infoblox, Cisco Enterprise Routers, Switches, ASA’s, FTD’s is a must

Network SME

A Senior Network Engineer to lead the stability, performance, and evolution of enterprise network. Own day to day operations, design and deliver minor projects and enhancements, and act as a key decision maker ongoing issues, standards, and incident response priorities. This role blends hands-on engineering with leadership teams to meet uptime, performance and scalability goals.

• Ensure availability and performance across LAN/WAN, WLAN, SD WAN, data center, and cloud interconnects; proactively remediate alerts and capacity issues.
• Lead major incident, drive root cause analysis (RCA), implement corrective/preventive actions, and maintain post incident documentation.
• Author change plans, execute network changes during maintenance windows, and adhere to ITIL processes and risk controls.
• Establish post-migration validation protocols and rollback prevention to ensure successful transitions and minimize operational risk.
• Maintain standardized configurations and golden templates; enforce baseline compliance and secure device hardening.
• Administer network ACLs, firewalls, VPNs, segmentation, and NAC (e.g., 802.1X), coordinating closely with Security/IR teams.
• Develop and tune dashboards, SNMP/NetFlow/s Flow, device telemetry, and syslog for actionable insights; maintain runbooks.
• Manage TAC/service escalations, RMA, firmware/OS lifecycle, and bug impact assessments.
• Scope, design, and deliver small to medium network projects (e.g., site cutovers, Wi Fi refreshes, routing redesigns, micro segmentation, SD WAN policy tuning).
• Publish L2/L3/WLAN standards, address/route plans, QoS models, and security patterns; maintain HLD/LLD documentation.
• Design VPC/VNet topologies, hybrid connectivity (VPN/Direct Connect/ExpressRoute), routing and security policies across cloud/on prem.
• Implement network automation (e.g., Meraki APIs) to reduce toil and enforce compliance at scale.
• Benchmark, capacity plan, and optimize QoS, multicast, load balancing, and application delivery paths.
• Build lab tests, pilots, and staged rollouts; define success criteria and rollback plans.
• Evaluate and select platforms, tooling, and designs based on business needs, risk, and total cost of ownership.
• Make real time tradeoffs during incidents and maintenance windows; decide sequencing, rollback thresholds
• Enforce standards, review changes, approve exceptions, and mentor engineers on best practices.
• Partner with Security, Cloud, Systems, and PMO to align roadmaps and deliver outcomes on time and within budget.
• Experience in Meraki, Infoblox, Cisco Enterprise Routers, Switches, ASA’s, FTD’s is a must
• 7-Signal / Mobile Eye would be excellent
• Logic Monitor would be good but not a requirement