Lead Network Engineer

Senior Network Engineer

ERT is seeking a motivated individual to provide senior network engineering support for the National Weather Service's lifesaving Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS). Responsibilities include ensuring secure, reliable, and high-performance connectivity across hybrid environments (on-premises, cloud, and edge field sites). This role will lead the design of networking solutions to support data-intensive workloads, real-time weather ingest/processing, and mission-critical system availability.

Key responsibilities include:

• Design and implement cloud and hybrid networking solutions to support a distributed, microservices-based architecture including EDGE device deployment.
• Develop secure, high-throughput connectivity for data ingest pipelines, storage services, and inter-service communication.
• Architect solutions leveraging cloud-native networking (e.g., AWS VPC, Transit Gateway, PrivateLink, Azure Virtual WAN, GCP VPC).
• Serve as the technical lead for network engineering across the program.
• Mentor and guide junior network engineers and site technicians.
• Collaborate with the Cloud Platform Architect, Security Engineers, and DevSecOps teams.
• Oversee configuration, deployment, and troubleshooting of networking components (firewalls, VPNs, routers, load balancers).
• Support migration of legacy connectivity models to zero-trust, cloud-native designs.
• Ensure compliance with network security standards (FIPS, NIST, FedRAMP, etc.).
• Monitor and optimize network performance for low-latency, high-volume weather data flows.
• Design resilient and fault-tolerant architectures (multi-region, failover, disaster recovery).
• Implement observability and monitoring solutions (CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, ELK, Prometheus/Grafana).
• Work with Agile teams to support feature and enabler delivery that depend on networking.
• Participate in PI Planning, system demos, and architecture syncs to ensure alignment.
• Manage networking-related dependencies across field sites, cloud environments, and data centers.

Required skills:

• 7+ years of experience in network engineering, with at least 3 years in a lead or senior-level role.
• Expertise in cloud networking (AWS, Azure, or GCP), hybrid cloud connectivity, and network security.
• Strong knowledge of routing, switching, load balancing, VPNs, firewalls, and DNS/DHCP.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code (IaC) for networking (Terraform, Ansible, or CloudFormation).
• Deep understanding of network security models (Zero Trust, micro-segmentation, TLS/mTLS, PKI).
• Ability to lead and mentor a distributed engineering team.
• Experience completing software/firmware upgrades for routers/switches/firewalls.
• Must be a US Citizen or Permanent Resident and be able to pass a background investigation to obtain a security badge to enter the applicable government facility.

Education: BS in engineering, computer science, related discipline, or equivalent.

Location: This position supports work at NOAA's Silver Spring and College Park, MD facilities.

Compensation: The salary range for this role is $78,000 - 215,000/year. This range is a good faith estimate based on similar roles across the organization. ERT uses several factors when extending an offer, including but not limited to, the position's scope and expected duties, a candidate's work experience, education/training, and key skills.

Benefits: All full-time employees are eligible to participate in our flexible benefits package, which includes:

• Medical, Rx, Dental, and Vision Insurance
• 401(k) retirement plan with company-matching
• 11 Paid Federal Government Holidays
• Paid Time Off (PTO)
• Basic Life & Supplemental Life
• Health Savings Account, Flexible Spending and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts
• Short-Term & Long-Term Disability
• Employee assistance program (EAP)
• Tuition Reimbursement, Personal Development & Learning Opportunities
• Skills Development & Certifications
• Professional Membership Reimbursement
• Employee Referral Program
• Competitive compensation plan
• Discretionary variable incentive bonuses based on factors such as individual performance, business unit performance, and/or the company's performance
• Publication and Conference Presentation Awards with bonuses

ERT is a VEVRAA Federal Contractor and Equal Opportunity employer - All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or protected Veteran status.