Principal Network Engineer

At MITRE, your passion fuels work that impacts our nation and improves lives. This is where your skills strengthen national security, cybersecurity, health, transportation, and citizen services. We’re a nonprofit engineering, applied research, and advanced technology organization working in the public interest. With objectivity and integrity at our core, we lead federally funded research and development centers for U.S. government agencies - collaborating with industry and academia to deliver integrated, high-impact solutions that advance our nation’s health, security, and prosperity. Our people tackle the toughest technical challenges, supported by competitive benefits, meaningful career development, and a culture of innovation, collaboration, and technical excellence. Choose MITRE for a career with purpose - and help shape the future.

Department Summary:

The L614 - Intelligent Network Services Department within MITRE Technology and Engineering specializes in complex network challenges vital to national well-being. Our work involves researching, developing, and applying advanced technologies in core areas such as:

• Enterprise Network Engineering
• Network Security
• Network Management and Orchestration
• Network Modeling and Simulation
• AI Infrastructure and Data Center Networking
• Infrastructure Virtualization and Containerization
• Software Development
• IT Service Management (ITSM)

By integrating deep technical expertise across networking and ITSM, we provide our federal sponsors with comprehensive solutions that enable their mission outcomes.

Roles & Responsibilities:

MITRE’s Intelligence Network Services department is seeking talented Network Engineers to join our team and leverage expertise in enterprise networking, network security, automation, and infrastructure architecture to address complex technical challenges for a wide range of sponsor organizations. Candidates will contribute to the design, implementation, testing, validation, and modernization of secure, resilient, and scalable network environments spanning LAN/WAN, data center, and emerging AI infrastructure use cases. The role requires strong collaboration, technical rigor, and the ability to translate mission needs into practical engineering solutions.

Basic Qualifications:

• Typically requires a minimum of 10 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 8 years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD with 5 years’ experience; or equivalent combination of related education and work experience.
• Must have an active Secret U.S Government issued Security Clearance. Must be eligible to obtain and maintain a Top Secret U.S Government issued Security Clearance. Per the U.S. Government’s eligibility requirements, you must be a U.S Citizen to be considered for a security clearance.
• This position requires a minimum of 4 days a week on-site
• The candidate will engage in hands-on, mission-driven work. Responsibilities span the full solution lifecycle-from design and prototyping through testing, implementation, and monitoring-across networking and digital service management solutions. The candidate is expected to have knowledge in the following activities:
  • Network Architecture & Strategy: Define architecture and engineering strategy for network and service management platforms, including target-state designs, technology standards, service frameworks, operational processes, and implementation artifacts that enable secure, scalable, resilient, and supportable solutions.
  • Network Implementation & Validation: Configure, deploy, test, and validate enterprise network infrastructure and security services across IPv4/IPv6, LAN/WAN, campus, branch, data center, and cloud environments, including routing, switching, VLANs, VRFs, BGP, OSPF, SDN, SD-WAN, DNS, DHCP, NAT, load balancing, firewalls and ACL policy enforcement, network segmentation, SASE, network orchestration, policy-as-code, and Zero Trust architecture. Drive infrastructure automation, configuration compliance, and repeatable deployments.
  • Data Center Network Architecture, Operations & Transformation: Support the network infrastructure of the data center, including planning, design, implementation, day-to-day network operations, capacity management, consolidation, relocation, and migration initiatives. Apply knowledge to setup servers, hypervisors, VMs, containers, Kubernetes, backup and recovery systems, routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, and data/voice/video networks. Contribute to modern architecture and operating models such as Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC), and hyperconverged infrastructure.
  • Network Monitoring: Design, implement, and enhance network monitoring and observability capabilities to provide visibility into performance, availability, fault conditions, and operational health across enterprise, and data center environments. Utilize tools and protocols such as SNMP, syslog, NetFlow/IPFIX, streaming telemetry, APIs, and dashboards to support event correlation, alerting, incident response, capacity planning, trend analysis, and service reliability.
  • Network Modeling & Simulation: Develop and apply network modeling, simulation, emulation, and test methodologies to evaluate proposed architectures, validate design assumptions, analyze traffic patterns, assess resiliency, and predict performance and scalability outcomes prior to production deployment. Support technical decision-making through scenario analysis, failure testing, what-if assessments, and the use of lab, virtualized, or digital twin environments.
  • ITSM & Service Improvement: Apply IT Service Management (ITSM) principles and platforms, including ServiceNow, to improve service delivery, operational efficiency, incident and problem management, change control, request fulfillment, asset and configuration management, and service performance through standardized processes, workflow automation, metrics, and continual service improvement.
  • Cybersecurity Risk Analysis: Conduct cybersecurity risk assessments of proposed architectures, designs, and implementation plans to evaluate security posture, identify threats, vulnerabilities, and control gaps, and recommend mitigation strategies, compensating controls, and risk-based trade-offs aligned with business, operational, and compliance requirements.
  • Technical Reporting & Communications: Clearly communicate technical findings, methodologies, and project outcomes through written reports, briefings, and demonstrations for sponsors and internal teams.
  • Knowledge Sharing: Actively participate in internal MITRE technical exchange events focused on emerging trends in networking and service management.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, related discipline, or equivalent combination of related education and work experience.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills
• Strong communication, presentation, and writing skills
• The ability to build collaborative and mutually beneficial working relationships with people of different backgrounds.
• Certifications: CCNA, CCNP, CCIE, ITIL
• Knowledge of, or hands-on experience in:
  • AI Infrastructure & Data Center Networking: Designing, deploying, validating, and optimizing AI infrastructure, including the network architecture required for AI data centers. Experience should include high-bandwidth, low-latency network design for large-scale east-west traffic patterns, fabric architectures such as leaf-spine, and technologies such as high-speed Ethernet and/or InfiniBand, RDMA/RoCE, network segmentation, load balancing, resiliency, and performance testing to support AI/ML training and inference workloads.
  • Software Development & Automation: Experience using languages like C++, Python, and JavaScript. Experience with scripting and automation tools such as Ansible, Terraform, PowerShell, and Bash with development and administration in Linux environments.

This requisition requires the candidate to have a minimum of the following clearance(s):

Top Secret

This requisition requires the hired candidate to have or obtain, within one year from the date of hire, the following clearance(s):

Secret

Salary compensation range and midpoint:

$173,200 - $216,500 - $259,800 Annual

Work Location Type:

Onsite

It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.

Commitment to Non-Discrimination

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to disability, status as a protected veteran or any other status protected by applicable federal, state, local or international law.

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