Network Engineers, Senior Engineers & Architects (CBP)

Agile Defense supports U.S. national security and critical civilian missions through adaptive technology and engineering solutions. The company is hiring network engineers and architects across several levels to design, build, and sustain infrastructure for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, including routing and switching, WAN and LAN transport, wireless, segmentation, and firewalls. The role involves maintaining reliable networks, modernizing infrastructure under change control, and improving network documentation and operational resilience.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and sustain that infrastructure

You will work on routing and switching, WAN and LAN transport, wireless, segmentation, and firewalls in a mixed Cisco, Juniper, and Arista environment, alongside field deployment teams, cloud engineers, and security staff

Incidents get resolved without a second escalation to establish who owns the problem

Recurring failures get traced to a root cause and closed, rather than reset and re-reported a week later

You can tell a non-technical operator what happened and when it will be fixed, in terms they can act on

Changes you make hold up under continuous operational load, not just in the maintenance window

Refresh and redesign work lands inside approved windows and does not run past them

Designs account for the sites that are hardest to reach and hardest to take down, not only the convenient ones

Capacity and transport decisions get made before a site outgrows them, rather than after users start complaining

Rollback paths exist and have been tested before a cutover begins, not drafted during one

Someone who was not present for a change can understand what was done and why

Diagrams and configuration records match what is actually deployed

Where a standard exists, it is written down. Where one does not, that gap is visible rather than tribal knowledge

Troubleshooting knowledge ends up somewhere searchable rather than staying in your head

You execute changes and work incidents inside established standards. You know which problems are yours to solve and which need to go up, and you escalate before a small issue becomes an outage

You own a segment, a site group, or a system. You make routine design calls yourself and bring the consequential ones to review

You take the problems that arrive without a clear answer

Other engineers check their approach with you before they commit to it, and you are usually the one who figures out why the intermittent fault is not intermittent

You set the design that others build against, and you are accountable when that design meets an operational reality it did not anticipate

You own whether the environment holds together as a whole, including the parts you did not design and the decisions you inherited

Delivers high-level technical leadership to meet or exceed establishes project goals

Preferred

Clearance : Active CBP Background Investigation (CBP BI) and EOD strongly preferred. We can begin processing for candidates who do not hold one

• Active Industry certifications, such as CCNA, CCNP (routing and switching)
• Nice to have: experience and expertise with Zero Trust (Zscaler) and Palo Alto technologies
• Previous experience CBP highly desired, followed by DHS or DoW
• Advance skills in 3 or more of the following: + Cisco SD-WAN + Cisco Hyperflex + Cisco StealthWatch + Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure + Cisco Firepower
• Willing to be cross trained in the above technologies
• You have kept a distributed network running where downtime had consequences beyond user frustration
• You have modernized live infrastructure under change control, not only built new environments
• You have worked at remote or austere sites and can describe what you did differently because of it
• You have operated in mixed-vendor environments and are not dependent on one vendor's tooling
• You hold an active CBP BI, a fitness determination at another DHS component, or an active DoD clearance. Any of these shortens your start date
• You can work inside federal change management and accreditation without treating it as an obstacle
• Certifications such as CCNP, CCIE, or JNCIP are useful but not a substitute for having done the work

Active CBP BI

CCNA certification

CCNP certification

Zero Trust expertise

Palo Alto technologies

Cisco SD-WAN

Cisco Hyperflex

Cisco StealthWatch

Cisco ACI

Cisco Firepower

Distributed network management

Infrastructure modernization

Mixed-vendor environments

Federal change management

Willingness to learn

Adaptability

Experience in remote sites

Benefits

$10,000 signing bonus for candidates with an active CBP BI. Payable after 90 days; standard terms apply.

Hybrid with travel

Health Insurance, dependent upon position

Life Insurance, dependent upon position

Paid Time Off, dependent upon position

Holiday Pay, dependent upon position

Short-term and long-term Disability, dependent upon position

Retirement, dependent upon position

Learning and Development opportunities, dependent upon position

Other optional benefit elections, dependent upon position

Company

National security and civilian mission IT, data, and cyber services

Mclean, Virginia, USA

https://agiledefense.com/

Founded in 1998

1001-5000 employees

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in management information systems, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field (e.g. Networking and Telecommunications) with 10+ years of experience performing network engineering or 14+ years of network engineering experience without a bachelor's degree
• Minimum of ten (10) years of verifiable network engineering experience supporting a large, complex Federal agency. Strong knowledge of networking protocols, such as TCP/IP, BGP, OSPF, EIGRP, MPLS, VPNs and VLANs
• Expertise and experience with Cisco technology and Firewall technologies. Ability to perform firewall changes
• Hands-on experience with SDN technologies such as Cisco ACI or VMware NSX. Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills, with the ability to troubleshoot complex network issues
• Delivers high-level technical leadership to meet or exceed establishes project goals

Citizenship : U.S. Citizenship required

Travel : Regular, expect 35-40%

Clearance : Active CBP Background Investigation (CBP BI) and EOD strongly preferred. We can begin processing for candidates who do not hold one

• Active Industry certifications, such as CCNA, CCNP (routing and switching)
• Nice to have: experience and expertise with Zero Trust (Zscaler) and Palo Alto technologies
• Previous experience CBP highly desired, followed by DHS or DoW
• Advance skills in 3 or more of the following: + Cisco SD-WAN + Cisco Hyperflex + Cisco StealthWatch + Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure + Cisco Firepower
• Willing to be cross trained in the above technologies
• You have kept a distributed network running where downtime had consequences beyond user frustration
• You have modernized live infrastructure under change control, not only built new environments
• You have worked at remote or austere sites and can describe what you did differently because of it
• You have operated in mixed-vendor environments and are not dependent on one vendor's tooling
• You hold an active CBP BI, a fitness determination at another DHS component, or an active DoD clearance. Any of these shortens your start date
• You can work inside federal change management and accreditation without treating it as an obstacle
• Certifications such as CCNP, CCIE, or JNCIP are useful but not a substitute for having done the work
• Bachelor’s degree in management information systems, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field (e.g. Networking and Telecommunications) with 10+ years of experience performing network engineering or 14+ years of network engineering experience without a bachelor’s degree

Required skills

Network Engineering, TCP/IP, BGP, OSPF, EIGRP, MPLS, VPNs, VLANs, Cisco Technologies, Firewall Technologies, Cisco ACI, VMware NSX

Preferred skills

• Willing to be cross trained in the above technologies

Experience

10+ years