Network Engineer Senior

Network Engineer

It's a great time to join the City of Boulder!

Application Deadline: September 9, 2025

Compensation Details: Full Pay Range 103,043.20 - 154,564.80 Generally, the hiring range is from the minimum up to 80% of the range. This is a full-time salaried position.

Scheduled Weekly Hours: 40

Benefit Eligibility Group: Non Union (30+ Hours)

Locate the Benefit Eligibility Group value on the Employee Benefit Eligibility document to identify the benefits offered for this job.

Job Description Summary: With limited supervision, installs, manages, monitors, and supports the city's local- and wide-area network infrastructure. Leads strategic and capacity planning efforts, functional and technical design of enterprise systems, and resolution of complex problems. Evaluates telecommunications vendor products in hardware, software, and services and recommends purchases consistent with the organization's short- and long-term objectives. Coordinates activities between all affected areas to ensure success without unnecessary system outages to Innovation & Technology (IT) customers. Recommends and implements network policies and standards and ensures adherence to security procedures. Performs troubleshooting, diagnosis, and repair of network hardware and software related problems. Plans for future network and communication solutions to coincide with the long-term priorities, goals, and needs of the city. Provides technical assistance to IT staff and performs related duties as required.

Job Description:

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Network Engineering and Administration. Manages and supports all aspects of the city's network communications environment including, but not limited to, the following:

• Manages and maintains the connectivity, performance, availability, and security of all city network infrastructure both on-premises and in public cloud environments (principally Microsoft Azure).
• Delivers highly available network connectivity solutions for all city facilities and data centers as well as the internet including planning and design.
• Responsible for the specification, procurement, service contract management, inventory management, OS/software/firmware management, lifecycle management, and replacement of all network hardware components.
• Installs, configures, manages, and monitors all network components to ensure that they perform optimally.
• Creates and maintains complete and accurate inventories and documentation of network systems using tables, diagrams, documents, and other suitable methods.
• Responsible for the administration of network switching and routing, Wi-Fi controllers and access points, point-to-point wireless systems, and leased circuits.
• Responsible for the administration of network firewalls, firewall controllers, ACLs, IPS, AAA, web content filtering, and associated regulatory compliance.
• Responsible for the administration of remote access and site-to-site VPN solutions.
• Responsible for network management including automation, central monitoring and notification systems, centralized logging systems, metrics and analytics, and configuration management and control systems.
• Manages enterprise services including IP address management (IPAM), DHCP, DNS, and RADIUS.
• Coordinates the management, operation, and monitoring of the city's data centers to ensure their high availability, reliability, and resiliency.
• Responsible for the coordination and administration of electrical power systems supporting network hardware including the administration of uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, power distribution components, and collaboration with Facilities staff on provisioning suitable electrical circuits in buildings.
• Creates and maintains emergency restoration and disaster recovery plans for the network infrastructure to assure that any component failures or damage are remediated in an orderly and timely manner.
• Collaborates with the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) to ensure secure network operation and compliance with organizational security guidelines and policies. Actively participates in the performance of periodic IT system security audits as well as routine, automated security vulnerability scanning, and diligently remediates detected vulnerabilities.
• Collaborates with system administrators, application developers, and database administrators to select innovative, high performing, cost effective, efficient, scalable, and secure public cloud solutions and architectures, particularly with Azure.
• Contributes to the migration of suitable on-premises server, storage, network, database, and application systems to IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and serverless functions in the public cloud (Azure) and ensures their continued integration in a greater hybrid cloud architecture.
• Collaborates with IT customers and stakeholders to understand their needs and identify opportunities to provide solutions to those needs.
• Collaborates with the Network Architect, the architect of inside and outside physical plant infrastructure, to effectively deliver coordinated network connectivity solutions ensuring performance, high availability, scalability, and longevity.
• Provides on-call and tier 2–3 level technical support to customers. Executes communication plans to inform customers about scheduled and unscheduled service outages and any issues affecting IT system performance, service availability, or security.
• Creates and maintains standards and procedures for the network environment and related systems. These include best practices for equipment specification, architectures, configurations, protocols, etc.
• Identifies requirements and designs appropriate systems solutions to meet business needs.
• Contributes to the achievement of established service level agreements.
• Complies with all City of Boulder user, application, and network administration security policies.

Inside and Outside Plant Infrastructure Management

Manages and supports all aspects of the city's physical-layer network communications infrastructure including, but not limited to, the following:

• Acts as a subject matter expert for management, planning, design, strategy, construction, maintenance, repair, contracting, documentation, and forecasting related to the city's inside physical plant (indoor copper and fiber optic cable, conduit, rack systems, and related assets) and outside physical plant (outdoor fiber optic cable, conduit, and related assets). Also serves as coordinator and collaborator on the city's partnerships, lease/trade/sale agreements, and service provider relationships as they relate to outside physical plant assets.
• Creates and maintains complete and accurate inventories and documentation of outside plant assets and features (fiber cables, fiber strands, fiber splices, fiber terminations, conduit, manholes, handholes, poles, etc.) using tables, diagrams, fiber management systems (FMS), and geographic information systems (GIS).
• Creates and maintains complete and accurate inventories and documentation of inside plant assets and features (copper cables, fiber cables, racks, panels, pathways, etc.) using tables, diagrams, floor plans, and other suitable methods.
• Coordinates and manages projects for the construction, repair, and modification of physical plant infrastructure including scope definition, design collaboration, budgeting, vendor selection, contracting, purchasing, and ongoing vendor relationship management.
• Manages a contractor for the performance of underground utility location services for all of the city's underground outside plant infrastructure. Assures that the locating contractor has continual access to accurate and up-to-date data on the location of the city's underground telecommunications assets. Supplies data to and maintains the city's relationship with the Utility Notification Center of Colorado (UNCC).
• Creates and maintains emergency restoration and disaster recovery plans for the outside plant infrastructure to assure that any damage is remediated in an orderly and timely manner.
• Collaborates with the Network Planner and Network Administrators to effectively deliver coordinated network connectivity solutions ensuring performance, high availability, scalability, and longevity.
• Collaborates with other city departments including Public Works - Utilities, Public Works - Transportation, Facilities, and City Attorney for coordination of joint projects, construction permits, traffic management, facilities changes, and contracts.
• Collaborates with partner organizations to develop and maintain mutually beneficial network connectivity solutions through agreements for shared infrastructure, shared projects, leases, trades, sales, and purchases. These partners include municipal, county, state, and federal government entities, educational institutions like the Boulder Valley School District and the University of Colorado, research institutions like NCAR, NOAA, and NIST, as well as commercial entities. Contributes to the city's lead party role in the operation of the Boulder Research and Administrative Network (BRAN) by participating in regular meetings of the BRAN partners and maintenance of the BRAN fiber network.
• Provides on-call and tier 2–3 level technical support to customers. Executes communication plans to inform customers about scheduled and unscheduled service outages and any issues affecting IT system performance, service availability, or security.
• Creates and maintains standards and procedures for the physical plant infrastructure and related systems. These include best practices for material specification, architectures, labeling, cable routing, etc.
• Performs duties to achieve established service level agreements.

Customer Service

Provides consistently excellent customer service through responsiveness, collaboration, work