Principal NOC Engineer

Empowering Connectivity, Ensuring Reliability. 

Principal NOC Engineer

About the role: 

The Principal NOC Engineer is the primary technical advisor and environment owner for a portfolio of strategic accounts. Success requires elite networking expertise, outstanding consulting and communication skills, and close collaboration with Service Desk, NOC, and leadership to maximize client stability and satisfaction. 

What you’ll be doing:

Essential Functions and Responsibilities 

• Lead diagnostic and restoration efforts for complex incidents; perform root-cause analysis and publish findings. 

• Act as senior escalation resource and mentor for Tier 1-3 engineers; deliver case debriefs, training, and best-practice guidance. 

• Collaborate with the product team on network product design that drives stability and with the Implementation team on network design as needed. 

• Own the technical relationship for assigned clients—maintain deep knowledge of environments, risks, and business goals. 

• Conduct proactive health checks, capacity planning, performance tuning, and best-practice audits to prevent issues before they surface. 

• Develop and present multi-year technical roadmaps aligned to client strategy, budget, and service capabilities. 

• Produce clear, thorough documentation (HLD/LLD, MOP/CAB change plans, incident RCAs, environment runbooks). 

• Influence service standards, tooling, and automation; pilot emerging technologies for future managed service offerings. 

• Participate in a rotational on-call schedule for high-priority escalations. 

• Other duties as needed. 

What you’ll bring:

Qualifications 

• Expert-level Cisco certification (CCIE-Enterprise or CCIE-Routing & Switching) required. 

• ITIL Foundation (or higher) preferred. 

• CWNE certification or equivalent wireless expertise is a plus. 

Required Technical Competencies 

• 10+ years of experience with dynamic routing protocols. 

• 10+ years of experience with Cisco IOS/IOS-XE Routing/switching platforms. 

• 10+ years of experience with Remote Access VPN and Site-to-Site VPN. 

• 10+ years of experience in troubleshooting and managing Firewalls: ACLs, NAT, NGFW, routing. 

Exposure to most of the following technologies: 

• ACI (4+ years) 

• ISE (4+ years) 

• Cisco SD-Access (2+ years) 

• Public cloud (AWS or Azure) (3+ years) 

• FMC and managed devices (FTDs) (5+ years) 

• DNAC (3+ years) 

• Cisco SD-WAN (3+ years) 

• Palo Alto Firewalls and Panorama, including Prisma Access and Prisma SD-WAN (3+ years) 

• Automation / Programmability: Python / Ansible (3+ years) 

Firewall expertise (Palo Alto, Cisco ASA, Fortinet, Checkpoint) is highly valued and may offset ga