Network Engineer

About the role

6-month contract job with a client in St Paul, Minnesota (onsite). Senior Network Engineer (10+ years of experience) with experience working in the oil and gas industry, plants, or energy sector preferred. Under general direction, responsible for activities related to network engineering.

Responsibilities

• Lead network design and engineering initiatives.
• Develop network architecture and design solutions rather than day-to-day operational support.
• Partner with Corporate IT, Application teams, and other infrastructure groups.
• Provide technical leadership and mentor other team members.
• Present technical recommendations and updates to senior leadership.
• Support the rollout of a major NextGen Maintenance initiative, which will enable maintenance personnel to leverage mobile devices in the field.
• Travel to refinery locations and corporate offices as needed.
• Ensure long-term requirements of the Last Mile Networking Product Team and is included in the overall Refining IT planning of the department.
• Lead configuration, maintenance, and troubleshooting of switches and wireless devices.
• Monitor network performance, availability, and capacity; recommend improvements to improve resiliency, scalability, and service quality.
• Troubleshoot complex network incidents, perform root cause analysis, and implement corrective actions to prevent recurrence.
• Develop and enforce network security standards, segmentation strategies, and access controls.
• Plan and execute network upgrades, migrations, hardware refreshes, lifecycle replacements, and infrastructure modernization projects.
• Collaborate with cybersecurity, server, cloud, application, operations, and business teams to deliver integrated technical solutions.
• Create and maintain network diagrams, configuration standards, operational procedures, implementation plans, and support documentation.
• Provide technical mentoring and escalation support for junior engineers, operations teams, and support personnel.
• Participate in change management, incident response, disaster recovery planning, and on-call support for critical network services.

Requirements

• Approximately 10+ years of network engineering/design experience.
• Strong Layer 1 and Layer 2 networking expertise.
• Experience with: Cisco networking equipment, Arista switches, Fiber networking infrastructure, Core switching technology, and strong troubleshooting skills.
• Network design and architecture experience.

Qualifications

• Routing knowledge (does not need to be a routing expert) — preferred.
• Security experience — preferred.

Technical Skills

• Routing and Switching: Advanced knowledge of TCP/IP, VLANs, STP, HSRP/VRRP, OSPF, EIGRP, BGP, MPLS, QoS, subnetting, route redistribution, and routing design.
• Network Security: Experience with ACLs, network segmentation, zero trust principles, IDS/IPS, NAC, secure remote access, and vulnerability remediation.
• Wireless Networking: Experience designing, deploying, and supporting enterprise wireless networks, wireless controllers, access points, RF planning, authentication, and performance tuning.
• SD-WAN and WAN Technologies: Experience with SD-WAN, WAN optimization, carrier circuits, internet edge design, failover, redundancy, and remote site connectivity.
• Network Monitoring and Tools: Proficiency with monitoring, logging, packet capture, configuration management, and troubleshooting tools such as SolarWinds, Wireshark, NetFlow, SNMP, syslog, and network automation platforms.
• Automation and Scripting: Working knowledge of Python, PowerShell, Ansible, APIs, templates, and infrastructure-as-code concepts to improve consistency and reduce manual effort.
• High Availability and Resiliency: Ability to design redundant network architectures, disaster recovery connectivity, failover strategies, and highly available production environments.
• Documentation and Standards: Strong ability to maintain accurate diagrams, IP address management, standards, runbooks, configuration baselines, and operational procedures.

Soft Skills

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
• Ability to communicate effectively with both technical and business stakeholders.
• Comfortable presenting and briefing senior leadership.
• Proven mentoring and technical leadership experience.
• Ability to collaborate across multiple functional teams.

Pay

$65/hr – $70/hr on W2. The rate may be negotiable based on experience, education, geographic location, and other factors.

Schedule

6-month contract, onsite in St Paul, Minnesota.

Travel

Approximately 25–35% travel. Travel will primarily be to refinery sites, with occasional travel to corporate offices.