Sr. Network Engineer

Job Overview

As a Senior Network Engineer, you will play a critical role in analyzing, implementing, configuring, and maintaining Great Lakes Cheese’s (GLC) complex network infrastructure to ensure low-latency, high-performance, and high-availability systems. This role is responsible for all aspects of Great Lakes Cheese’s IT network including analyzing and troubleshooting system related issues, identifying, evaluating, and developing system solutions, and providing systems support. Your responsibilities will include, working with IT colleagues to develop strategic and operational plans to introduce and deploy new network and data center infrastructure, ensuring security, availability, performance, quality, and responsiveness. As the Senior Network Engineer, you will hold a pivotal role in the initiative to transform and modernize the enterprise network and telephony environment to address the increasingly complex needs of resilience and cybersecurity. Reporting to the Manager IT Network and Communications Services, this position is instrumental in supporting the technologies of today as well as selection and implementation of technology solutions to meet the changing needs of GLC.

Job Responsibilities

• Design and implement Network solutions: 

1. Gather business requires needed to design, implement & deliver complex technical projects within a defined scope and schedule covering all aspects of the IT and OT network, including:  LAN, WAN, WLAN, SD-WAN, VPNs, NAC, and Zero Trust technologies. 
2. Install and configure routers, switches, firewalls, and other network devices as needed.
3. Implement network engineering guidelines and best practices regarding performance, reliability, resilience, security, and scalability.

• Network support:

1. Maintain and support all GLC networks including corporate office and manufacturing plant industrial networks, wide area network, and wireless network.

• Monitoring and performance optimization: 

1. Provide technical and administrative environment monitoring throughout the enterprise, including network, security, server, virtualization, and critical services as well as critical applications.
2. Proactively monitor network performance and integrity seeking to provide the business with 99.997% uptime.

• Troubleshooting and issue resolution: 

1. Rapidly diagnose and resolve network-related incidents and outages to minimize downtime and maintain uninterrupted business operations.
2. Perform Root Cause Analysis (RCA) when issues occur and provide mitigations or solutions to prevent future issues from occurring as part of an ongoing improvement process.
3. Participate in on-call responsibilities and responses to emergency production issues.
4. Participate in relevant Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity planning to ensure outages are minimized as well as in any necessary efforts to ensure the ongoing operation of the business in the event of a disaster.

• Security: 

1. Implement robust security measures to safeguard company IT infrastructure and protect against cyber threats and attacks.
2. Create, oversee, and test security measures (e.g. access authentication, rights management, etc.).

• Collaboration with cross-functional teams: 

1. Work closely and collaborate with other functional areas including system administration, IT support, operations, applications, engineering, MES, , and other GLC personnel to understand requirements and provide network solutions that align with business needs.

• Network capacity planning: 

1. Conduct regular capacity planning assessments to anticipate future requirements and propose improvements and solutions which might be necessary to ensure the network can scale to accommodate growing demands.
2. Suggest network improvements to improve performance, capacity, and scalability while providing documented benefits.

• Documentation:

1. Develop design documents and configuration/installation instructions for a wide variety of network equipment.
2. Create diagrams and other documentation artifacts to ensure that knowledge is shared freely among the members of the Network Engineering team as well as the greater IT team when needed.

• Stay updated with industry trends: 

1. Keep abreast of the latest networking technologies, trends, and best practices, and evaluate their potential application to improve GLC’s infrastructure.

• Ability to respond to critical issues during off-hours and weekends as needed.
• Ability to travel up to 25% within the United States.
• Additional duties as assigned.

Required Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s Degree in Information Systems or related field from an accredited institution.
• Minimum 7 Years of network engineering experience.
• Cisco Certified Network Administrator (CCNA) certification OR other relevant certifications; CompTIA, etc. 
• Deep knowledge of Ethernet, route / switch, network protocols, topologies, and architectures, with a focus on highly available low-latency networks.
• Proficiency in configuring and troubleshooting network devices, including routers, switches, and firewalls.
• Strong technical knowledge, skills, and experience in the following areas: 

1. Cisco networking technologies (LAN / WAN / WLAN).
2. Routing protocols such as BGP (both iBGP and eBGP), OSPF, and EIGRP.
3. Layer 3 designs, including FHRPs, VRFs, SDWAN, DMVPN, MPLS, etc.
4. Layer 2 designs, including VLANs, MST, PVST, and RSTP.
5. ACL’s, route maps, prefix lists, and firewall objects.
6. Radio Frequency (RF), wave propagation, RSSI, co-channel and adjacent channel interference (and causes thereof), performing RF surveys, various wireless software such as Ekahau, etc.
7. Wireless LAN Controllers, Wireless Access Points, and 802.1x, EAP, TLS, PKI, and other aspects of wireless technologies.
8. VXLAN design, implementation, and support along with BGP EVPN and Data Center Layer 2 adjacency.
9. Network storage technologies and file system management.

• Understanding of the implications of changes and events within your domain upon applications, other teams within IT, and the business as a whole.
• Skilled and experienced with critical IT processes and systems such as change control, incident management, and more.
• Microsoft Windows / Server, Linux, and Microsoft SQL Server experience.
• Strong analytical and organization skills along with excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to handle multiple projects / tasks while also appropriately prioritizing production issues / business needs in a fast paced environment.
• Critical thinking skills along with a drive to troubleshoot and problem solve beyond routine issues.
• Strong teamwork approach to problem solving with the ability to make sound, independent decisions based on functional expertise and experience.

Preferred Education and Experience

• Master’s degree in relevant discipline
• At least 10 years of network engineering experience preferred.
• Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) certification, Cisco Certified Internet Expert (CCIE), or other relevant certifications including Microsoft, Rockwell, VMWare, etc.
• Manufacturing industry expertise (ideally food)
• Experience working with carriers, vendors, resellers, customers, and others within the IT / business ecosystem.
• Experiencing leading IT projects.
• Hands on experience in:

1. Network engineering (routing, switching), monitoring, and analysis tools (such as SolarWinds) and automation such as Cisco, Meraki, Arista, or similar.
2. Server and desktop virtualization and ability to execute using VMWare solutions.
3. Storage & SANs, using Fiber Channel, iSCSI, FCoE, & NFS.
4. Windows Server Operating Systems up to and including 2016-2022.
5. Shop floor controls (Rockwell / Allen-Bradley PLCs)

Working Conditions

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