Network Engineer / Hands-On Network Manager - Houston, TX

Zedcor Security Solutions•Houston, TX

3d•Onsite

About The Position

Zedcor Inc. is hiring a hands-on, player-coach Network Engineer / Hands-On Network Manager to own the company’s network end to end. The role covers office LAN, WAN, and wireless; datacenter networking for on-premises virtualization and an Azure Local buildout; hybrid Azure connectivity; and edge connectivity for surveillance towers. The position combines setting standards, hands-on engineering, and building operational practices that support the company’s compliance program. It is based full-time at Zedcor’s Houston office in the Willowbrook area. The role supports networks across the Houston headquarters, Calgary, and remote sites in the United States and Canada. The successful candidate will engineer and operate cloud and datacenter connectivity, administer firewalls and WAF platforms, manage network security and infrastructure services, and maintain the documentation and evidence needed for audits. The position also includes mentoring junior IT staff, managing vendors and carriers, and supporting incident response, change management, vulnerability remediation, and disaster recovery. Zedcor describes itself as an equal opportunity employer and states that it complies with the ADA and applicable state and local laws in providing equal opportunity to qualified people with disabilities.

Requirements

At least 7 years of hands-on network engineering experience, including at least 2 years leading network operations or projects.
Deep production routing and switching expertise, including BGP, VLANs, spanning tree, QoS, and link aggregation.
Production experience with Azure networking, including ExpressRoute, virtual networks, VPN gateways, NSGs, and load balancing.
Experience administering firewalls and WAFs in production, internet-facing environments.
Strong documentation practices, including diagrams, IPAM discipline, and change management.
Comfort with hands-on work such as racking, cabling, console access, and after-hours maintenance windows when required.
An active, verifiable professional certification such as CCNP Enterprise or equivalent.
Authorization to work in the United States.
Ability to manage vendors and perform asset tracking and change management.
Ability to manage Sophos firewalls or become proficient with Sophos within the first 30 days if experienced with another major firewall platform.
Ability to design, build, maintain, and troubleshoot IPsec and SSL VPN networks.

Nice To Haves

F5 BIG-IP administration experience, including LTM and Advanced WAF; F5 certification is a plus.
Microsoft Certified: Azure Network Engineer Associate (AZ-700).
Datacenter networking experience with hyperconverged or Kubernetes environments, such as Azure Local, AKS, or Proxmox VE.
Experience supporting SOC 2, ISO 27001, or similar audit programs.

Responsibilities

Design, build, operate, maintain, and troubleshoot LAN, WAN, and wireless networks across the Houston headquarters, Calgary, and remote sites in the United States and Canada, including structured cabling, switching, wireless, 802.1X, and VPNs.
Own datacenter networking, telecom connection management, and monitoring.
Engineer and operate hybrid cloud networking, including ExpressRoute, VPN gateways, virtual networks, NAT gateways, DNS, and Azure Front Door.
Administer F5 BIG-IP and its production WAF, including policy tuning, upgrades, and failover testing; support Azure WAF, Azure Application Gateway, Azure Front Door, and load-balancing platforms.
Manage firewalls, network segmentation, and access controls aligned with Zero Trust principles and Entra ID-based identity.
Manage IP addressing, DNS/DHCP, network documentation, and operation of the IPAM platform.
Manage ISP and carrier relationships across multiple sites and countries, including circuit provisioning, escalation, and cost control.
Build network monitoring and alerting into the monitoring stack and respond to network-related security events.
Create and maintain change records, diagrams, configuration evidence, and other documentation required for SOC 2 Type II; participate in audit walkthroughs.
Mentor and direct junior IT staff on network tasks and establish runbooks and operational practices.
Manage and support a Cradlepoint environment of more than 20,000 devices.
Ensure DNS and DHCP are centrally managed, monitored, logged, and secured, and are not hosted directly on firewalls.
Patch, monitor, log, audit, and secure network infrastructure; ensure network links, management access, VPNs, and sensitive data flows are encrypted.
Document network designs, firewall rules, routing policies, VPN configurations, standards, and runbooks.
Support incident response, change management, vulnerability remediation, disaster recovery, and SOC 2, FedRAMP, and StateRAMP readiness.
Use Zedcor’s internal PKI solution for device identity, certificates, authentication, encryption, and secure management.
Maintain centralized logging, audit logging, authentication, monitoring, and alerting; ensure firewalls are security enforcement points rather than core infrastructure service providers.
Configure and troubleshoot dynamic routing, including internal BGP.
Manage vendors and support asset tracking and change management.