Technology Specialist III, Network Administration

Education Service Center Region 4 - Houston, TX

Full-time

Houston, TX

Educational Services

About the position

The position provides primary support for LAN/WAN network services and coordinates departmental and facility-wide IT operations and projects. The role includes mentoring and coaching junior members of the Data Center and Network Solutions (DCNS) team, evaluating current infrastructure services, and providing recommendations for improvements.

Responsibilities

• Interface with internal and external clients to further Region 4 ESC technology services.
• Utilize excellent customer service skills toward the support of internal and external clients.
• Provide expertise and oversight of building wireless infrastructure including firmware upgrades and security audits.
• Provide primary support and guidance for enterprise systems including DNS, Content Filtering, Palo Alto Firewall, and Cisco Switches.
• Provide expertise and oversight of the building's firewall and DMZ infrastructure, including VPN access, client configurations, ACLs, and Cisco iOS configuration version control.
• Maximize network performance by monitoring performance, troubleshooting network problems and outages, scheduling upgrades, and collaborating with other departments on network impacts.
• Provide expertise and oversight of operational efficiency of network hardware and software using ITIL and PMP guidelines.
• Work in a team environment to accomplish departmental and business-related goals.
• Continue to achieve certifications within job responsibility areas to maintain proficiency.
• Document systems in accordance with Region 4 ESC ISO standards.
• Identify, analyze, research, and recommend changes to infrastructure, procedures, and processes to enhance productivity and efficiencies.
• Initiate, lead, and complete enterprise-wide projects in a timely and cost-efficient manner.
• Work collaboratively with external resources to further Region 4 ESC and DCNS projects.
• Provide secondary support and guidance for enterprise systems including Exchange, Email Security, ADFS, M365 Administration, Active Directory, Virtualization, Backups, Patching, Physical Servers, and Storage.
• Support and improve Region 4's disaster recovery program including data replication technologies.
• Provide assistance and technical guidance to advance Region 4's computing environment.
• Support and guide the advancement of AWS and Azure network environments.
• Serve as the lead technical position in the development of Region 4 ESC-related internal and external infrastructure.
• Coordinate timelines, financials, and project milestones with the DCNS Director and other Region 4 ESC personnel.
• Mentor and coach junior personnel on technical best practices.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology or 10 years of experience directly related to the major job responsibilities.
• CCNA or equivalent certification.
• Five years of experience in supporting and troubleshooting a multivendor switched network infrastructure.
• Recent hands-on advanced experience supporting firewalls & routers (Cisco/Palo Alto) including VPN, IPSec tunnels, ACLs, BGP, OSPF, LAN/WAN, MPLS.
• Two years of experience in supporting Palo Alto firewalls.
• Three years of recent experience in Cisco IOS deployments.
• Three years of experience in directly procuring, configuring, and deploying network devices.
• Three years of recent experience troubleshooting LAN/WAN connectivity issues using sniffers and network monitoring tools such as Solarwinds.
• Three years of experience troubleshooting Layer 3-7 protocols related to network connectivity.
• One year of recent experience installing and supporting point to point virtual private networks and secure FTP technologies.
• Two years of experience in supporting wireless technologies.
• Three years of experience managing internal and external DNS zones.
• Two years of experience managing and supporting infrastructure security.