Principal Network SME - Enterprise & Federal Infra

Trace3; United States; Hybrid; USD 223,000 - 243,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive medical, dental and视觉

401(k) Retirement Plan with Employer M

Competitive Compensation

Training and development programs

Office stocked with snacks and drinks

Collaborative culture

Work-life balance and generous PTO

Job summary

Trace3 is seeking a Principal Network Subject Matter Expert to serve as the technical authority for enterprise network architecture on a high-priority federal infrastructure program. The role combines strategic leadership with hands-on expertise to approve designs, develop target architectures, and mentor engineering teams.

The role requires on-site work at secure customer locations, with a hybrid environment and 6-month contract potential extension or conversion.

Qualifications

• 10+ years designing, modernizing, and supporting complex enterprise networks.
• Experience as network architect, technical authority, or senior escalation resource.
• Expertise with Cisco routing, switching, firewall, VPN, and data-center tech.
• Strong knowledge of BGP, OSPF, VLANs, VRFs, QoS, multicast, and high-availability design.
• Ability to develop architectures, BOMs, migration plans, and operational docs.
• Knowledge of firewall policy, micro-segmentation, Zero Trust, and secure remote access.

Responsibilities

• Serve as onsite network authority and trusted advisor to customer leadership.
• Define architecture principles, reference designs, and technology roadmaps.
• Assess performance, resiliency, security across enterprise, data-center, and remote sites.
• Develop target-state architectures, migration strategies, and test plans.
• Lead architecture reviews, risk assessments, and design trade-offs.
• Ensure solutions meet routing, switching, security, and DR requirements.
• Be the final escalation point for incidents and perform root-cause analysis.
• Establish standards for configuration, monitoring, and operations.
• Communicate decisions, risks, and trade-offs to stakeholders.
• Coordinate cross-functional technical execution and mentor engineers.

Skills

Enterprise network design

Cisco networking

Network security

Root-cause analysis

Observability/telemetry

Security clearance eligibility

Mentoring engineers

On-site collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s Degree in related field

Tools

Python

Ansible

APIs

Infrastructure as Code

CI/CD

VMware

Kubernetes/OpenShift

Job description

Trace3 is seeking a Principal Network Subject Matter Expert to serve as the technical authority for enterprise network architecture on a high-priority federal infrastructure program. The role combines strategic leadership with hands-on expertise to approve designs, develop target architectures, and mentor engineering teams.

The role requires on-site work at secure customer locations, with a hybrid environment and 6-month contract potential extension or conversion.