Network Field Engineer

NETWORK ENGINEER
MERGER & ACQUISITION NETWORK INTEGRATION
LocationApproximately up to 50% onsite at corporate HQ, Houston, TexasTravelApproximately up to 50% to company locations, offices, data centers, and field sites, including yards, shops, and construction or utility sitesHoursCutover and maintenance work frequently falls in evening and weekend windowsNETWORK ENGINEER POSITION SUMMARY
We are seeking a Network Engineer to support its Merger and Acquisition (M&A) program. This is a hands-on role for an engineer who works directly in network devices assessing acquired environments, building and configuring standard equipment, executing site cutovers, and troubleshooting through to resolution.
The work is project-based and spans the full delivery lifecycle discovery, documentation, bill of materials, procurement support, step-by-step implementation planning, and execution. The engineer produces the plan and then carries it out.
NETWORK ENGINEER RESPONSIBILITIES
Discovery, documentation, and planning

• Perform discovery and validation at acquired sites circuits, IP addressing, routing, switching, wireless, firewalls, network access control, remote access, and dependencies establishing ground truth by inspection rather than relying on existing documentation.
• Assess current state, identify architectural risks, and contribute to target-state design and per site integration plans.
• Build site bills of materials switches, access points, edge routers, optics, licensing, PoE and power, racks, cabling, and spares and support procurement on part selection, entitlements, and lead times.
• Write step-by-step implementation and cutover plans with pre-checks, sequenced steps, validation, go / no-go criteria, and per site rollback.
• Track new job site and branch office builds through 's service management system, following the process applicable to each request type.
• Maintain accurate diagrams, configurations, procedures, and as found and as built documentation.

Implementation and cutover

• Stage, install, and configure standard network, security, and wireless equipment; rack, cable, label, and commission at acquired offices, yards, shops, and data center spaces.
• Replace acquired switching and wireless with standard equipment.
• Execute site cutovers and circuit migrations in approved change windows, coordinated with the acquired company's change control process.
• Coordinate with M&A project teams, infrastructure and security teams, local IT contacts, carriers, vendors, and field technicians.
• Troubleshoot issues arising from integration work using logs, packet captures, and device output to identify root cause; escalate high-impact issues while continuing to drive resolution, keeping stakeholders clearly updated.

Transition support

• Support the acquired company's existing network platforms through the transition period. These vary by acquisition and commonly include Fortinet, Meraki, and Palo Alto.
• Where elements of the acquired environment remain in service during transition typically the WAN and a firewall supporting their legacy VPN maintain them and make routing changes as sites migrate.
• Maintain connectivity between and the acquired environment throughout a phased, multi-site cutover.
• Identify and resolve overlapping IP space between the acquired environment and , and account for the DNS consequences of the approach chosen re-IP of DNS servers at headquarters and main branch sites carries significant downstream impact.

Cisco platform engineering

• Configure and troubleshoot Cisco SD-WAN routers and Cisco switches at the IOS / IOS-XE CLI edge device configuration, device and feature templates, policy, application-aware routing, QoS, path selection, and link failover and resolve control-connection and data-plane faults.
• Deploy Catalyst 9200 and 9300 access switching, including stacking, uplinks and port-channels, PoE budgeting, VLAN and trunk design, and spanning-tree behavior.
• Build and maintain Cisco wireless on Catalyst 9800-80 wireless LAN controllers WLAN profiles, policy profiles, policy tags, site tags, and RF tags and profiles and install and troubleshoot Catalyst 9120 / 9130 and current-generation Wi-Fi 6E / 7 access points, including AP join and provisioning, mounting and PoE, coverage and RF, and client onboarding. Aironet 2800 and 3800 series are encountered at acquired sites.
• Onboard sites into Cisco ISE, including switch and controller configuration for 802.1X and MAB, and troubleshoot wired and wireless authentication failures.
• Administer and troubleshoot Cisco Secure Firewall (FTD) security policy, NAT, VPN, and routing including site-to-site VPN tunnels to third parties where required.
• Design, build, and validate failover behavior: transport and path failover, dual-edge and dual-circuit handoffs, first-hop redundancy, and convergence tested rather than assumed.

NETWORK ENGINEER REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 5+ years of hands-on network engineering or network operations experience, including contributing to network architecture or design.
• Fluent Cisco IOS / IOS-XE configuration and troubleshooting at the CLI.
• Hands-on experience with Cisco Catalyst 9200 / 9300 access switching and Catalyst 8161, 8235, and 8355 SD-WAN routers, or directly comparable platforms; Catalyst 9500 and Nexus exposure useful for larger sites.
• Hands-on Cisco SD-WAN experience, including edge device configuration, templates, policy, and troubleshooting.
• Hands-on Cisco wireless experience, including Catalyst 9800-80 controller configuration (WLAN, policy, site and RF tags) and physical access point installation and troubleshooting.
• Hands-on Cisco Secure Firewall (FTD) administration policy, NAT, IPsec VPN, and routing.
• Practical 802.1X / MAB network access control experience and the ability to troubleshoot authentication failures end to end; Cisco ISE experience strongly preferred.
• Routing depth across SD-WAN overlay, LAN, and failover behavior, including maintaining connectivity between environments during a phased migration.
• Fluent IP subnetting and address planning, including identifying and resolving overlapping address space. This will be assessed directly in the technical screen.
• Strong understanding of TCP/IP, VLANs, trunking, STP, routing, NAT, ACLs, VPNs, QoS, DHCP, and DNS.
• Experience producing bills of materials and supporting procurement for site builds; ability to interpret and create network diagrams and translate requirements into implementable designs.
• Experience troubleshooting with CLI tools, logs, packet captures, and monitoring platforms.
• Demonstrated ability to rack, cable, stage, configure, and replace network equipment and access points.
• Experience working under formal change control; strong communication skills with technical and nontechnical stakeholders; and the ability to work independently in a technically demanding enterprise environment.

NETWORK ENGINEER PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Cisco CCNA or CCNP, or equivalent hands-on experience.
• Cisco ISE hands-on administration policy sets, authorization profiles, and profiling.
• Experience with other vendors such as Meraki, Fortinet, and Palo Alto is helpful, since acquired environments frequently run them.
• Experience with M&A, divestiture, site integration, or network consolidation work particularly supporting multiple vendor platforms through a phased cutover, or migrating between SD-WAN platforms.
• Network automation with Python, Ansible, or vendor APIs configuration generation, bulk validation, and reporting.
• Experience supporting distributed, multi-site, or field-based organizations, including construction, utility, or industrial environments.

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