Sr Azure Government Cloud Network Engineer

Candidates requiring visa sponsorship now or in the future are not eligible to apply for this opportunity. C2C or 1099 not available; W2 employment on Prominent’s payroll required during the contract period.

About the role

Remote contract-to-hire opportunity for a Senior Azure Government Cloud Network Engineer. You will operate within a multi-location Scaled Agile framework, building automated infrastructure gates, integrating service virtualization, and implementing expert-level routing frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Immutable Infrastructure as Code (IaC) & Automation using Terraform (100% Code-Driven Architecture).
• Expert-Level Enterprise Routing & Traffic Engineering:
  • Advanced VWAN Orchestration: Design and manage global Azure Virtual WAN (VWAN) architectures utilizing Secured Virtual Hubs integrated with security partners or Azure Firewall to centrally govern all cloud-native traffic.
  • Deterministic Routing Intent: Implement Routing Intent and Routing Policies within VWAN to systematically direct all private and internet-bound traffic (Internet and Private Traffic categories) through security appliances without complex manual programming.
  • Dynamic Hybrid BGP Optimization: Engineer resilient, multi-site Azure ExpressRoute data paths using advanced Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) communities, multi-exit discriminators (MED), and AS-path prepending to enforce predictable failover paths for distributed federal sites.
  • Forced Tunneling & Symmetric Routing: Author rigorous User-Defined Routes (UDRs) and BGP policies to mandate Forced Tunneling, ensuring all branch, cloud, and edge-bound traffic is backhauled to specific inspection boundaries without causing asymmetric routing drops.
• Architect and maintain high-fidelity environments within Azure GovCloud, ensuring strict compliance with US federal security frameworks (e.g., FedRAMP High, DoD SRG Impact Level 4/5, CJIS):
  • Zero-Trust Micro-segmentation.
  • High-Assurance Gateways using ExpressRoute.
• Eliminate Staging Drift.
• Decoupled Integration & DEV Isolation: Configure Azure Private DNS zones and localized routing mechanisms via IaC to support API Contract Testing and Service Virtualization, keeping early-stage testing entirely self-contained for distributed teams.
• Distributed Scaled Agile Collaboration: Partner closely with decentralized, multi-location engineering squads, Product Leads, Quality Leads, and App Leads across Agile release trains (ARTs) to map infrastructure requirements directly to ADO User Stories and maintain a 100% Requirements Traceability Matrix Depth.
• Performance-Ready Fabrics, Traffic Management & Zero-Day Validation:
  • Dark Launch Infrastructure.
  • Targeted UI Routing.
  • Centralized Configuration Access.
  • Instantaneous Failure Recovery.

Requirements

• Expert-Level Azure Routing Toolkit: Proven history deploying Azure Virtual WAN (VWAN) with Routing Intent, Secured Virtual Hubs, Forced Tunneling, and complex User-Defined Routes (UDRs).
• Advanced BGP & Hybrid Connectivity: Mastery of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) engineering over multi-circuit Azure ExpressRoute and VPN gateways in high-availability enterprise configurations.
• Advanced Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Proven mastery of Terraform to build declarative, production-grade, and immutable multi-environment architectures.
• Azure Government Cloud Expertise: Deep experience navigating the specific constraints, endpoint differences, and compliance parameters of Azure GovCloud.
• Microservices & Container Networking: Strong understanding of service-to-service communication, ingress controllers, and overlay/underlay networking (e.g., Azure CNI) for autonomous microservices.
• Scaled Agile Workflow Integration: Solid experience operating in distributed, multi-location environments utilizing frameworks like SAFe or Scrum-at-Scale, leveraging Azure DevOps (ADO) for linking infrastructure work items to application features.
• Traffic & Packet Analytics: Proficiency using Azure Network Watcher, Traffic Analytics, and Azure Monitor to capture database lag, CPU/memory telemetry, and error behaviors under heavy simulated traffic loads.
• Shift-Left Advocate, TDD/BDD Aligned, Zero-Bug Accountability.

Pay

Anticipated hourly rate while on contract: $65–75/hr.