Senior Network Engineer

Senior Network Engineer: Firewall, VPN & Data Center Migration

Position Overview

This role supports a major financial services customer's global network engineering organization. You will lead and deliver network migrations and perimeter security work across data centers and global points of presence, with a focus on Fortinet and Arista platforms, VPN and Extranet connectivity, and automation that makes complex cutovers safer and faster.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end migration and cutover of external-facing VPN, Extranet, and MPLS connections across global data centers, from dependency discovery through phased cutover, validation, and rollback planning

• Engineer and support data center networks on Arista EOS and Cisco Nexus (NX-OS) platforms, including L2/L3 configuration, VLAN, LACP, vPC, port-channel, BGP, OSPF, and VXLAN/EVPN spine-leaf designs

• Deploy, operate, and troubleshoot Fortinet FortiGate firewalls, with FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer for central management, configuration compliance, and log analysis

• Design and run parallel-connection cutover strategies, standing up new IPsec VPN parameters (IKE Phase 1/2) alongside live connections to remove outage risk for trading-critical applications

• Work with business owners, application teams, security teams, carriers, and external partners to map traffic flows, firewall, routing, and NAT requirements, and group related clients into coordinated migration windows

• Support firewall and load balancer dependency mapping across Palo Alto, Juniper SRX, Cisco ASA/Firepower, F5 BIG-IP, and Citrix Client during data center consolidations and migrations to Microsoft Azure

• Diagnose and resolve P1 production incidents, including BGP flapping, IPsec VPN failures, and IKE mismatches, using structured root cause analysis with cross-functional teams

• Perform packet-level analysis (Wireshark, tcpdump) to isolate TCP/IP, DNS, SSL handshake, and application-layer issues

• Build Python automation (Netmiko, Paramiko, REST APIs, Git) for configuration auditing, deployments, validation, and ownership discovery to cut manual effort and improve consistency

• Produce Low-Level Design (LLD) documentation, topology diagrams, cutover plans, and operational runbooks

• Execute change, incident, and problem management under ITIL practices using ServiceNow, Jira, and Confluence

• Build dashboards and reporting (e.g., Power BI, Splunk) that give management, engineers, and project managers the visibility they each need

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of enterprise network engineering experience, ideally in financial services or other regulated environments

• Hands-on experience with Fortinet FortiGate, FortiManager, and FortiAnalyzer

• Deep experience with data center switching and routing: Arista EOS and/or Cisco Nexus, BGP, OSPF, and VXLAN/EVPN

• Strong IPsec VPN expertise, including IKE Phase 1/2 troubleshooting and large-scale VPN or Extranet migration

• Experience with at least two additional firewall platforms (Palo Alto, Juniper SRX, Cisco ASA/Firepower)

• Experience with load balancers (F5 BIG-IP, Citrix Client) in migration or reconfiguration projects

• Python scripting for network automation (Netmiko, Paramiko, REST APIs) and Git-based version control

• Packet-level troubleshooting using Wireshark and/or tcpdump