Position : Network Engineer, Corporate & Datacenter (Contract)

Location : Palo Alto, CA (Onsite)

Duration : Long term Contract

Job Description:

Client is looking for a Network Engineer to design, deploy, and operate the corporate and datacenter network infrastructure that underpins our global workforce and production environments.

You will own the full lifecycle of campus and datacenter networks—from access switching and wireless LAN to spine-leaf fabrics and next-generation firewall policy—while driving the reliability, security, and scalability of Client’s on-premises infrastructure.

This role sits within Global Infrastructure and Platform Services (GIPS) at our Palo Alto, CA headquarters. You will work closely with Security, IT, and Cloud Engineering teams, and are encouraged to leverage AI tools to accelerate troubleshooting, documentation, and automation.

Key Responsibilities

Corporate & Campus Networking

• Design and maintain the corporate LAN, including access/distribution/core switching, VLANs, STP, and QoS for our Palo Alto HQ and remote offices.
• Manage and optimize the wireless LAN infrastructure (controller-based and cloud-managed), including site surveys, RF planning, SSID design, and client troubleshooting.
• Administer 802.1X network access control, certificate-based authentication, and guest network segmentation.

Datacenter Networking

• Operate and evolve the datacenter network, including spine-leaf architecture, BGP, VxLAN/EVPN overlays, and high-availability designs.
• Ensure network stability and performance across on-premises datacenter infrastructure, proactively monitoring capacity and latency baselines.
• Partner with Server, Storage, and Platform Engineering teams on rack-and-stack connectivity, new service deployments, and capacity expansions.

Security & Firewall (Palo Alto Networks)

• Manage Palo Alto Networks NGFW platforms (PA-Series, Panorama, SCM), including security policy, App-ID, URL filtering, Threat Prevention, and WildFire integration.
• Administer Global Protect VPN and Prisma Access for remote access and enforce zero-trust network segmentation between zones.
• Conduct firewall rule reviews, clean up unused policies, and support periodic security audits.

Reliability & Automation

• Monitor network health using observability tooling (SNMP, streaming telemetry, NetFlow/sFlow) and drive resolution of incidents and root-cause analyses.
• Develop and maintain automation scripts and configuration management workflows (Python, Ansible, Terraform) to reduce toil and improve consistency.

Job Description

Use AI-assisted tools to accelerate log analysis, runbook generation, and network documentation.

Required Qualifications

• Proficiency with Palo Alto Networks NGFWs and Panorama; experience with security policy management, zone-based segmentation, and GlobalProtect VPN.
• Solid understanding of routing and switching fundamentals: BGP, OSPF, STP/RSTP, VLANs, LACP, and L2/L3 design.
• Experience designing and supporting enterprise wireless networks (Cisco Meraki, Aruba, or equivalent); familiarity with 802.11ax/Wi-Fi 6 and RF optimization.
• Working knowledge of datacenter networking concepts: spine-leaf, VxLAN/EVPN, and high- availability failover.
• Strong troubleshooting methodology—comfortable working through complex multi-layer problems in production environments.
• Effective written and verbal communication; able to produce clear runbooks and incident postmortems.

Preferred Qualifications

• Relevant certifications: PCNSE (Palo Alto Networks), CCNP Enterprise, CWNA/CWSP, or equivalent.
• Experience with network automation using Python, Ansible, or Terraform.
• Familiarity with public cloud networking (AWS, Azure, or GCP) as it intersects with on- premises connectivity (Direct Connect, ExpressRoute, VPN).
• Exposure to load balancers (F5, AVI/NSX ALB, NGINX) and application delivery in datacenter environments.
• Experience with 802.1X / NAC platforms (Cisco ISE, Aruba ClearPass, or equivalent).
• Comfort using AI tools (e.g., Claude, Copilot) for network operations, documentation, and automation tasks is a plus and actively encouraged.