Senior Network Architect – Federal Systems & Security Lead

Trace3; Linthicum (MD); Hybrid; USD 223,000 - 243,000; Part time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive medical, dental and vis­

401(k) Plan with match and savings

Competitive compensation

Training and development programs

Office snacks and beverages

Collaborative culture

Generous PTO

Job summary

Trace3 is seeking a Principal Network Subject Matter Expert to lead enterprise network modernization on a high-priority federal program. You’ll set standards, approve designs, and mentor engineering teams while working onsite at secure customer locations.

This six-month W2 contract has strong potential for extension or conversion to full-time and requires eligibility for a security clearance. You will collaborate across network, security, systems, storage, and DevOps teams to deliver resilient,

Qualifications

• 10+ years designing, modernizing, and supporting complex enterprise networks.
• Experience as network architect, technical authority, or senior escalation resource in mission-critical environments.
• Expertise with Cisco enterprise routing, switching, firewall, VPN, and data-center technologies.
• Advanced knowledge of BGP, OSPF, VLANs, VRFs, QoS, multicast, segmentation, high availability.
• Experience developing and approving network architectures, BOMs, migration strategies, implementation plans, test plans, and operational docs.
• Strong knowledge of network security, including firewall policy, micro-segmentation, secure remote access, network access control, and Zero Trust.
• Expert-level troubleshooting across routing, performance, availability, DNS, DHCP, NTP, IP address management, authentication, and application connectivity.
• Experience with monitoring/observability technologies: telemetry, SNMP, syslog, NetFlow/IPFIX, packet capture.
• Proven ability to assess technical risk, compare design trade-offs, and communicate with technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
• Ability to lead cross-functional execution and work onsite in secure federal/industrial environments.
• Initial 6‑month contract with potential extension/FT conversion; on-site work; security clearance eligible.
• Education: Bachelor’s preferred but not required.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the onsite network technical authority and trusted advisor to customer leadership.
• Define network architecture principles, standards, and roadmaps for mission-critical environments.
• Assess architecture, performance, resiliency, security across enterprise and data-center sites.
• Develop and approve target-state architectures, BOMs, migration strategies, and test plans.
• Lead technical discovery, architecture reviews and risk assessments with recommendations.
• Ensure routing, switching, segmentation, security, high availability, remote access compliance.
• Serve as final escalation point for incidents and root-cause analysis.
• Establish config, documentation, monitoring, and operational standards for performance.
• Communicate decisions, risks, and trade-offs to stakeholders.
• Coordinate execution across network, security, systems, storage, DevOps and program teams.
• Mentor engineers and strengthen network engineering practices.
• Support onsite assessments, migrations, incidents, and post-implementation stabilization.

Skills

Cisco routing & switching

Network security & Zero Trust

BGP & OSPF

Network architecture & migration

Troubleshooting & RCA

Mentoring engineers

Python & Ansible

Education

Bachelor's Degree in a related field

Tools

VMware

Kubernetes

OpenShift

Python

Ansible

Job description

Trace3 is seeking a Principal Network Subject Matter Expert to lead enterprise network modernization on a high-priority federal program. You’ll set standards, approve designs, and mentor engineering teams while working onsite at secure customer locations.

This six-month W2 contract has strong potential for extension or conversion to full-time and requires eligibility for a security clearance. You will collaborate across network, security, systems, storage, and DevOps teams to deliver resilient,