Junior Data Center Engineer

Edgewater Federal Solutions • Albuquerque, NM

7d • Onsite

About The Position

Edgewater Federal Solutions is seeking a Junior Data Center Engineer to support a major national laboratory. In this role, you will provide Level I and/or Level II technical support for various systems including cabling, power management, space planning, and cooling management in a large and complex Data Center setting. You will troubleshoot complex problems that span multiple subsystems and systems, requiring in-depth knowledge of the sophisticated Data Center environment. A strong background in IT and High-Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructure is essential, with a solid understanding of cooling, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, and chemical analysis for both open and closed-loop water systems. You will collaborate on data center consolidation efforts, engaging with customers to evaluate, design, and plan consolidation activities. The role involves developing innovative solutions to significant and unusual problems, applying new principles, concepts, and practices. You will also serve as a resource to executive management, providing analysis of information, trends, and goals at a corporate level.

Requirements

• BS in relevant discipline plus a minimum of 2 years, or more, of directly related experience that demonstrates the knowledge, skills, and ability to perform the duties. Related experience may be substituted for relevant education and vice versa.
• Ability to obtain & maintain a U.S. Dept. of Energy Clearance
• U.S. Citizenship is required.
• Experience working in mission‑critical production environments with change control, incident response, and structured troubleshooting.
• Ability to work safely and effectively in live data center spaces (DCFIT coordination, raised floor environments, cabling standards).
• Strong understanding of L2/L3 networking fundamentals: VLANs, STP, LACP, static routing, OSPF, BGP, ACLs, QoS.
• Experience configuring and supporting major network vendors (any of): Cisco, Arista, Juniper, Mellanox/NVIDIA Networking.
• Familiarity with multipath topologies, spine‑leaf architectures, and high‑bandwidth fabrics.
• Understanding of basic firewall and segmentation concepts (paths, zones, NAT, routing symmetry).
• Familiarity with enterprise cabling best practices: fiber types (LR/SR/ER), transceiver selection, rack elevation awareness.
• Working knowledge of monitoring and telemetry: CloudVision, Netropy/Apposite tools, Nagios/Prometheus/Grafana, or similar.
• Ability to follow SOPs/MOPs, support planned change windows, and adhere to structured rollback/validation procedures.
• Strong analytical and troubleshooting abilities, with a demonstrated ability to drive issues to resolution during outages.
• Clear verbal and written communication skills.
• Ability to participate in on‑call rotations and support after‑hours change windows if needed.

Nice To Haves

• Hands‑on experience with Arista EOS, Cisco NX‑OS, Juniper JunOS, or Mellanox/NVIDIA platforms supporting 40/100/400Gbps networks.
• Experience with BGP tuning, traffic‑engineering policies, ECMP management, asymmetric‑routing detection, and complex route‑map design.
• Familiarity with EVPN/VXLAN, modern DC underlays, and high‑availability routing gateway designs (HA router pairs, blue/green cutovers).
• Experience troubleshooting firewall pathing issues, zone interactions, NAT64/NAT policy behavior, and segmentation used for HPC.
• Exposure to HPC networks and interconnects: RDMA, RoCE, basic InfiniBand concepts (subnet managers, fabric behavior).
• Understanding of congestion behaviors common in HPC (parallel I/O bursts, GPU‑node communication patterns).
• Familiarity moving or supporting HPC data flows across multi‑site infrastructures (tri‑lab WAN, DisCom, IHPC routing).
• Understanding of distributed HPC storage systems (Lustre, BeeGFS, Isilon, Spectrum Scale) and the routing or MTU constraints around them.
• Ability to work with HPC teams during large cluster deployments (rack placement coordination, switch firmware updates, cabling checks).
• Hands‑on experience with automation or configuration management tools (Ansible, Python, Terraform).
• Ability to build or maintain dashboards and telemetry for HPC network utilization (CloudVision pipelines, Netropy test data).
• Familiarity with gNMI/gRPC or streaming telemetry for performance analysis and anomaly detection.
• Understanding of high‑availability designs, reduced failure domains, and deterministic failover patterns in HPC networks.
• Experience monitoring and optimizing latency, packet loss, MTU mismatches, and congestion across crypto tunnels or 100Gbps transport.
• Ability to assist with capacity planning for rapidly growing HPC systems (rack density, port utilization, fiber paths, WAN circuit expansions).

Responsibilities

• Provide comprehensive support across all dimensions of the Data Center environment.
• Deliver Level I and/or Level II technical support to server technicians, network administrators, and support personnel for various systems, including cabling, power management, space planning, and cooling management in a large and complex Data Center setting.
• Troubleshoot complex problems that span multiple subsystems and systems, requiring in-depth knowledge of the sophisticated Data Center environment.
• Collaborate on data center consolidation efforts, engaging with customers to evaluate, design, and plan consolidation activities as needed.
• Develop innovative solutions to significant and unusual problems, applying new principles, concepts, and practices to address complex or strategic issues.
• Serve as a resource to executive management providing analysis of information, trends, and goals at a corporate level, contributing to the overall success and efficiency of the Data Center operations.

Benefits

• ISO 9001, 20000-1, 270001 certified
• Appraised at CMMI Level 3 Maturity for Development and Services
• Named in the Top Workplaces in the Greater Washington Area Small Companies for 2018 through 2025
• Equal employment opportunities

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level