Network Architect

MetaPhase Consulting • Washington, DC

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

MetaPhase is seeking an experienced Network Architect with eight or more (8+) years of experience to support a high-impact federal transportation security program. This role will design, implement, maintain, support, and modernize secure communication networks within and across complex government environments. The ideal candidate brings deep experience supporting government IT networks, distributed systems, Cisco and F5 technologies, multi-site connectivity, network security, and secure network topology management across operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) environments. This individual will work across infrastructure, cybersecurity, cloud, application, and operations teams to ensure mission systems remain secure, available, performant, and resilient.

Requirements

• Minimum of eight or more (8+) years of progressive experience in network engineering, network architecture, infrastructure engineering, systems engineering, or related IT disciplines.
• At least 5 years of experience supporting government IT networks.
• Experience implementing, maintaining, supporting, developing, and designing communication networks within or between organizations.
• Hands-on experience with Cisco network technologies, including routing, switching, firewalls, VPNs, access control, and network segmentation.
• Hands-on experience with F5 systems, including load balancing, application delivery, traffic management, DNS/GSLB, and high availability configurations.
• Experience with distributed systems architecture and the network patterns required to support resilient, scalable systems.
• Experience designing and managing secure network topologies across OT and IT environments.
• Experience with network security architecture, including segmentation, firewalling, secure remote access, controlled data flows, enclave design, and boundary protection.
• Knowledge of Equinix Mesh or related interconnection, network fabric, and hybrid connectivity concepts.
• Experience designing and supporting multi-site network architectures across data centers, field locations, cloud environments, or hybrid environments.
• Strong understanding of LAN, WAN, VPN, VLAN, DNS, DHCP, BGP, OSPF, TCP/IP, IPv4/IPv6, TLS, certificates, firewalls, NAT, proxies, and load balancing.
• Experience supporting network monitoring, performance management, incident response, root cause analysis, and operational troubleshooting.
• Experience developing network diagrams, topology maps, implementation plans, technical configuration documents, firewall change requests, and operational procedures.
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively with infrastructure, cloud, cybersecurity, application, DevSecOps, program management, and federal stakeholder teams.

Nice To Haves

• Prior experience supporting DHS, TSA, transportation security, airport operations, defense, law enforcement, critical infrastructure, or national security missions.
• Experience securing or architecting networks that connect operational technology, connected devices, edge environments, SCADA-adjacent systems, IoT/IIoT, or mission equipment.
• Experience with Azure, AWS, or government-approved cloud networking.
• Experience with Equinix Fabric, Equinix Metal, Network Edge, cloud interconnects, SD-WAN, SASE, zero trust networking, or software-defined networking.
• Experience supporting FedRAMP, FISMA, NIST 800-53, RMF, ATO, POA&M remediation, STIG hardening, or federal cybersecurity requirements.
• Experience with network automation, Infrastructure as Code, Ansible, Terraform, Python, PowerShell, or Git-based change workflows.
• Certifications such as CCNP, CCIE, Cisco Security, F5-CTS, F5-CA, CompTIA Network+, Security+, Cloud+, Azure Network Engineer, AWS Advanced Networking, or equivalent.

Responsibilities

• Designing, building, and modernizing infrastructure architectures across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.
• Evaluating mission, performance, security, cost, scalability, and operational requirements to determine the best-fit infrastructure services and deployment model.
• Leading infrastructure migration projects from legacy or on-premises environments into government-approved cloud platforms.
• Designing and supporting hybrid architectures that integrate data centers, cloud services, networks, storage, compute, identity, monitoring, and endpoint environments.
• Designing for disaster recovery, failover, continuity of operations, backup and recovery, resilience, and mitigation of infrastructure risk.
• Architecting and supporting distributed systems across multi-site environments.
• Installing, configuring, testing, deploying, and managing multi-site infrastructure architectures.
• Installing, configuring, managing, and troubleshooting Dell hardware, including servers, storage, rack infrastructure, and related enterprise components.
• Supporting infrastructure capacity planning, performance tuning, availability planning, and lifecycle modernization.
• Supporting infrastructure modernization activities including virtualization, containerization, automation, configuration management, cloud migration, and environment consolidation.
• Developing infrastructure architecture diagrams, technical configuration documents, migration plans, disaster recovery plans, implementation plans, and operational runbooks.
• Coordinating with cloud, cybersecurity, network, database, application, DevSecOps, and program management teams to ensure infrastructure solutions are secure, supportable, and aligned to mission needs.
• Supporting development, integration, test, staging, production, and disaster recovery environments.
• Troubleshooting infrastructure issues across compute, storage, virtualization, networking, cloud, database platform, monitoring, and hardware layers.
• Providing technical recommendations to improve system performance, reduce cost, increase reliability, simplify operations, and reduce technical debt.
• Supporting release, deployment, and change management activities across controlled production and non-production environments.

Benefits

• MetaPhase Consulting is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, disability or veteran status, or any other factors protected by federal, state, or local law.

What This Job Offers

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