Senior Network Engineer

About the position

Why choose between doing meaningful work and having a fulfilling life? At MITRE, you can have both. That's because MITRE people are committed to tackling our nation's toughest challenges—and we're committed to the long-term well-being of our employees. MITRE is different from most technology companies. We are a not-for-profit corporation chartered to work for the public interest, with no commercial conflicts to influence what we do. The R&D centers we operate for the government create lasting impact in fields as diverse as cybersecurity, healthcare, aviation, defense, and enterprise transformation. We're making a difference every day—working for a safer, healthier, and more secure nation and world. Our workplace reflects our values. We offer competitive benefits, exceptional professional development opportunities for career growth, and a culture of innovation that embraces adaptability, collaboration, technical excellence, and people in partnership. If this sounds like the choice you want to make, then choose MITRE - and make a difference with us.

Department Summary:

The L616 – Enterprise and Tactical Networking Department within MITRE Technology and Engineering specializes in complex network challenges vital to national well-being. Our work involves researching, developing, and applying advanced technologies in core areas such as:

• Network architecture and design
• Software-defined / Virtual networks (SDN/NFV)
• Network reliability, resilience, mission security and assurance, network data analytics
• E2E network MS&A, T&E, AFSIM
• Embedded networks (IoT, ICS, SCADA)
• Tactical and threat-informed networking

By integrating deep technical expertise across these networking domains, we provide our federal sponsors with comprehensive solutions that enable their mission outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Defining validated designs for networks with details required for implementation
• Configuring, deploying, testing and validating the latest technologies in software-defined and virtualized networks as well as “traditional” networking
• Conducting cybersecurity risk assessments of proposed and existing designs to evaluate security posture, identify threats and vulnerabilities, and recommend mitigation strategies
• Designing, implementing, and enhancing network monitoring and data collection capabilities to provide visibility into performance, availability and operational health
• Developing and applying network modeling, simulation, emulation, and test methodologies to validate design assumptions, analyze traffic patterns, assess resiliency, and predict performance and scalability outcomes
• Developing solutions for coupling non-traditional, external threat feeds into traditional network routing parameters (i.e., bandwidth, delay, throughput) to better influence communications paths in challenging network environments
• Contribute to the design, implementation, testing, validation, and modernization of secure, resilient, and scalable network environments spanning LAN/WAN, data center, and tactical operations use cases.
• Defining designs that enable secure, scalable, resilient, and supportable solutions, including target-state designs, operational processes, and implementation artifacts.
• Conducting and providing risk assessments, threat and vulnerability identification, and mitigation strategy recommendations.
• Monitoring, troubleshooting and managing networks using protocols such as SNMP and / or Syslog, NetFlow/IPFIX, APIs and dashboards.
• Clearly communicate technical findings, methodologies, and project outcomes through written reports, briefings, and demonstrations.
• Actively participate in internal MITRE technical exchange events focused on emerging trends in networking and service management.

Requirements

• Typically requires a minimum of 5 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 3 years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD with relevant experience who can immediately contribute at this job step; or equivalent combination of related education and work experience.
• Ability to obtain a DoD Secret security clearance.
• U.S Citizen to be considered for a security clearance.
• Minimum of 4 days a week on-site.
• Engage in hands-on, mission-driven work. Responsibilities span the full solution lifecycle - from design and prototyping through testing, implementation, and monitoring - across various networking use cases and solutions.
• IPv4/IPv6
• Interior gateway routing protocols (e.g., OSPF)
• SD-WAN
• Docker Swarm / Kubernetes
• Network segmentation
• SNMP and / or Syslog
• NetFlow/IPFIX
• APIs and dashboards

Nice-to-haves

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Data Science related discipline, or equivalent combination of related education and work experience.
• Associate level networking certification(s) such as a CCNA or JNCIA.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills
• Strong communication, presentation, and writing skills
• The ability to thrive in collaborative and working relationships with people of different backgrounds.
• Recent hands-on experience configuring core network services (i.e., DHCP, DNS, NTP) and multiple routing protocols (i.e., OSPF, BGP).
• Experience with DevOps paradigms supported by virtualization, containerization, cloud and serverless architectures
• Experience using languages like Go, C++, Python, and JavaScript.
• Strong proficiency in scripting and automation using tools and frameworks like Ansible, Terraform, PowerShell, and Bash.
• Experience with version control systems, particularly Git, for source code management, collaboration, and CI/CD workflow integration.
• Experience collecting, process, and analyze large-scale network data (e.g., logs, flows, telemetry, SNMP, etc.) using tools such as Splunk, Elasticsearch, and Wireshark.
• Develop dashboards and visualizations to monitor network performance, capacity, and anomalies using Grafana, Kibana, and Microsoft Power BI.
• Implement data pipelines for real-time and batch network analytics using Apache Kafka, Apache Spark, Logstash, and Apache NiFi.
• Experience with Internet of Things (IoT), Industrial Control Systems (ICS), and / or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, including protocols and regulatory compliance frameworks such as Modbus, DNP3, OPC, BACnet, NERC CIP, IEC 62443, NIST SP 800-82.
• Experience integrating distributed and centralized network control algorithms and / or integrating external inputs to “traditional” network path decision logic to facilitate non-standard (i.e., not “shortest path first”) routing.
• Experience with network modeling, simulation, emulation, and test methodologies to validate design assumptions and predict performance.

Benefits

• competitive benefits
• exceptional professional development opportunities for career growth