Sr. Network Engineer

About the position

American Credit Acceptance (ACA) is seeking a highly skilled Senior Network Engineer with a minimum of 8 years of experience and strong Cisco expertise to join our IT infrastructure team. The ideal candidate will play a pivotal role in managing, maintaining, and advancing ACA's network infrastructure. This role requires someone who is not only technically proficient but also a strong collaborator capable of aligning network solutions with the company's growth and security objectives.

Responsibilities

• Design, deploy, and manage robust LAN, WAN, and SD-WAN infrastructure across ACA's datacenters and branch offices.
• Lead the architecture and implementation of scalable and secure network solutions, ensuring low latency and high availability for business-critical applications.
• Collaborate with internal teams and vendors to drive network projects from concept to completion, ensuring alignment with ACA's IT modernization strategy.
• Implement and manage advanced security protocols such as VPNs, firewalls, network access control (NAC), and segmentation.
• Perform network hardening, vulnerability assessments, and remediation activities to ensure compliance with internal policies and industry regulations (e.g., PCI-DSS).
• Monitor, analyze, and respond to network security incidents and proactively address potential risks.
• Provide day-to-day operational support, including troubleshooting and resolution of network-related issues, focusing on minimizing downtime and improving performance.
• Lead efforts in managing upgrades, patches, and firmware updates for network devices, ensuring optimal functioning and security.
• Administer and maintain routing and switching protocols (BGP, OSPF, EIGRP) across ACA's enterprise network.
• Diagnosing and resolving problems across a variety of hardware platforms and vendors including Cisco, F5, Palo Alto, Solarwinds, ForeScout and more.
• Use monitoring tools (e.g., SolarWinds, Splunk, Nagios) to evaluate network performance, detect anomalies, and ensure efficient bandwidth usage.
• Lead continuous improvement efforts, optimizing network performance by reviewing traffic patterns, capacity planning, and load balancing.
• Oversee QoS (Quality of Service) strategies for prioritizing critical application traffic and improving end-user experience.
• Partner closely with the cybersecurity, DevOps, and other Infrastructure teams to ensure secure, scalable, and future-proof network architecture.
• Act as the lead engineer during major network incidents, providing guidance to junior engineers and working with cross-functional teams to ensure swift issue resolution.
• Mentor and guide junior network engineers, fostering a collaborative and learning-oriented environment.
• Manage relationships with external vendors and service providers, ensuring that services align with ACA's technical and business needs.
• Lead network-related projects, including migrations, hardware upgrades, and infrastructure expansions, ensuring timely and successful completion.
• Participate in Change Advisory Board (CAB) meetings, driving the approval of network changes and ensuring minimal impact to business operations.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or related field preferred.
• Minimum 8 years of hands-on experience in network engineering, including design, implementation, and management of complex network infrastructures.
• Proven experience with Cisco technologies, including Cisco switches, routers, firewalls, and wireless controllers.
• Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) required.
• Strong expertise in routing and switching protocols (BGP, OSPF, EIGRP), as well as network security protocols (IPsec, SSL VPN).
• Experience with network automation and scripting (Python, Ansible) is a plus.
• Familiarity with SD-WAN technologies, NAC solutions (Cisco ISE or ForeScout), and network monitoring tools.

Nice-to-haves

• Strong project management skills with the ability to manage multiple projects in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.
• Experience with network infrastructure for virtualized environments (VMware NSX, Cisco ACI).
• Familiarity with cloud networking (AWS, Azure) and hybrid cloud integration.