Senior Wide Area Network (WAN) Engineer

Leidos•Hampton, VA

About The Position

The Defense sector at Leidos is seeking a cleared Senior Wide Area Network (WAN) Engineer to engineer, operate, and sustain long-haul transport and routing infrastructure across Department of Defense (DoD/DoW) networks. This individual serves as a Subject Matter Expert on routing for the enterprise WAN — assisting the Network Architect with Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) design, peering, and policy across NIPRNet, SIPRNet, and DISN service delivery points — and is accountable for the availability, performance, and STIG compliance of circuits supporting operational mission traffic worldwide.

Requirements

US Citizen with at least a Top Secret clearance and the ability to obtain a SCI prior to your start date.
Bachelor’s degree with 8+ years of experience or a Master’s degree with 6+ years of experience. Additional experience may be considered in lieu of a degree.
8+ years of hands-on enterprise WAN engineering and operations experience, with demonstrated ownership of multi-site routed transport in a DoD environment.
DoD 8570/8140 IAT Level II certification (Security+ CE or equivalent) plus an active CCNP Enterprise, JNCIP-SP, or equivalent routing certification.
Expert-level configuration and troubleshooting of eBGP and iBGP, including route reflectors, confederations, and full-mesh peering designs.
Proven ability to author and tune BGP routing policy using route maps, prefix lists, AS-path filters, communities, local preference, MED, and AS-path prepending.
Experience establishing and sustaining BGP peering with DISA/DISN service delivery nodes and commercial transport providers.
Working knowledge of BGP convergence tuning, dampening, BFD, and route leak/hijack mitigation.
Strong proficiency with OSPF, EIGRP, MPLS L2/L3 VPNs, VRFs, QoS policy for voice and mission traffic, and IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack operations.
Hands-on administration of Cisco (IOS-XE/IOS-XR/NX-OS) and Juniper (Junos) routing platforms in an operational production network.
Experience with Type 1 inline network encryptors (TACLANE/KG-175, HAIPE) and with DISA circuit lifecycle actions (TSR/TSO, DISA Direct/SNAP).
Working knowledge of DISA STIGs, RMF, IAVA remediation, and change control under DoD configuration management processes.
Demonstrated packet-level analysis skill using Wireshark/tcpdump, SPAN/TAP captures, and NetFlow to isolate faults across provider and government segments.
Ability to support on-call rotation, scheduled maintenance windows, and after-hours cutovers; occasional CONUS/OCONUS travel may be required.

Nice To Haves

CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure or Service Provider, JNCIE-SP, or DoD 8570/8140 IAT Level III (CASP+ or CISSP).
Experience with segment routing, MPLS traffic engineering, or EVPN in a large-scale transport core.
Hands-on experience with Cisco SD-WAN or Juniper SDWAN or comparable overlay transport in a DoD/DoW deployment.
Proficiency with Python, Ansible, for configuration deployment, compliance auditing, and network state validation.
Familiarity with JRSS, DODIN operations, and DoD boundary/CDS architectures.
Working knowledge of DWDM, SONET/SDH, and carrier Ethernet handoffs supporting long-haul circuits.

Responsibilities

Design, implement, and maintain BGP routing architecture across the enterprise WAN, including peering relationships, autonomous system boundaries, and route policy enforcement.
Serve as the escalation authority for complex WAN faults — route flapping, asymmetric paths, MTU and fragmentation issues, black-holed prefixes, and provider circuit degradation.
Engineer and execute circuit installations, migrations, bandwidth upgrades, and site cutovers with documented rollback plans and minimal mission impact.
Develop and maintain routing policy standards, IP address and ASN allocation plans, and authoritative network documentation including logical and physical topology diagrams.
Configure and sustain QoS, traffic engineering, and path selection to prioritize command and control, VTC, and VoIP traffic across constrained transport.
Apply DISA STIGs to routing and transport devices, remediate IAVA findings, and support RMF assessment and authorization artifacts and POA&M closure.
Coordinate with DISA, NOC/SOC teams, transport providers, and site network personnel to schedule and validate maintenance actions and outage restoration.
Monitor WAN health and capacity using SolarWinds, NetFlow, and SNMP-based tooling; produce trend analysis and capacity recommendations for government leadership.
Manage Type 1 encryptor configuration and key management coordination in support of secure enclave connectivity.
Mentor junior network administrators, review proposed configuration changes, and represent WAN engineering positions at CCB and technical review boards.