Principal Telecommunications Network Architect

The MITRE Corporation • McLean, VA

2d • $162,400 - $243,600 • Onsite

About The Position

MITRE is a nonprofit engineering, applied research, and advanced technology organization working in the public interest. Its Advanced Wireless & SATCOM Department provides independent communications engineering, network architecture, and technical analysis in support of critical national missions. MITRE seeks a senior technical leader with practical telecommunications backbone and carrier-core experience to support federal cybersecurity and critical-infrastructure partners in understanding how diverse telecom networks are built, interconnected, operated, monitored, and defended. The work focuses on mission-driven engineering analysis, technical leadership, and trusted-advisor support across legacy and modern telecommunications systems.

The position requires a minimum of three days per week onsite. The hired candidate must obtain a DHS Fitness clearance within one year of hire. U.S. citizenship is required to be considered for a security clearance.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Telecommunications Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related technical discipline with 10 years of related experience; or a master’s degree with 7 years; or a Ph.D. with 5 years; or an equivalent combination of related education and work experience.
• Substantial direct, hands-on experience engineering, architecting, integrating, troubleshooting, or technically assessing production-scale carrier telecommunications networks and their operational behavior.
• End-to-end understanding of carrier-grade telecommunications infrastructure beyond 5G radio access, including core network functions, IP transport and routing, signaling and interconnection, and the relationship between network elements, services, and operational telemetry.
• Ability to analyze complex communications architectures and identify network dependencies, technical risks, network behavior, and security and monitoring opportunities across heterogeneous legacy and modern systems.
• Experience developing architecture assessments, problem analyses, trade studies, or engineering recommendations that inform operational or programmatic decisions.
• Demonstrated senior technical leadership and ability to work effectively across engineering teams, government stakeholders, and industry partners.
• Ability to obtain and maintain the personnel suitability and access determinations required for assigned federal sponsor work.
• Must be eligible to obtain and maintain a DHS Fitness clearance; U.S. citizenship is required for security-clearance eligibility.
• Must work onsite at least three days per week.

Nice To Haves

• Direct engineering experience with multiple generations of commercial mobile-core or fixed telecom networks, such as LTE and 5G, EPC and 5GC, IMS, Diameter, and associated roaming and interconnect architectures.
• Experience with large-scale IP, MPLS, BGP, optical transport, DCI, and carrier operations and support systems, and ability to explain how these components interact.
• Hands-on experience with telecommunications threat hunting, network security analysis, incident investigation, protocol and packet inspection, or mapping threats to carrier network elements and exploitable visibility and detection points.
• Experience with communications resiliency and COOP analysis, including critical infrastructure dependencies, failure propagation, alternate communications pathways, and PACE planning.
• Experience supporting government-industry technical pilots, multistakeholder reference architectures, and evaluations of telecom technologies.
• Prior work with telecommunications carriers, major network equipment suppliers, critical infrastructure operators, or federal mission sponsors in a senior technical advisor or chief architect role.
• Existing sponsor suitability determination or prior experience onboarding to federal civilian mission environments, with the ability to engage effectively in time-sensitive sponsor work.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a senior technical advisor on telecommunications carrier core, backbone, transport, and service architectures supporting cybersecurity, infrastructure defense, and mission assurance.
• Characterize end-to-end fixed and mobile telecom architectures, including signaling, control and user planes, network functions, interconnects, routing, management systems, and network visibility points.
• Work with cyber analysts and threat hunting teams to translate mission questions into sound hypotheses, telecom-specific analysis methods, relevant telemetry sources, and practical findings, while identifying visibility gaps and limitations.
• Assess telecommunications network security, service dependencies, fault and failure modes, resilience, and attack surfaces; recommend engineering mitigations and testable approaches grounded in carrier network behavior.
• Shape and support collaborative government-industry technical pilots and COOP activities, including PACE communications planning and alternative transport and service approaches.
• Develop and independently review system and reference architectures, interface and dataflow diagrams, technical trade studies, analysis reports, integration plans, and briefings that prioritize actions and support informed decisions.
• Collaborate with federal mission stakeholders, telecom operators, equipment vendors, and multidisciplinary engineering teams to reconcile requirements, validate technical assumptions, and communicate recommendations.

What This Job Offers

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