Network Engineering Lead

Strategic Growth Partners provides both operations and strategic support to commercial organizations. Our client is a leading global professional services firm dedicated to helping organizations tackle their most complex business issues, maximize stakeholder value, and deliver sustainable change.

Their Corporate Performance Improvement practice is looking for a Network Engineering Lead to drive large-scale network assessment, consolidation, and network transformation for clients operating complex, globally distributed infrastructure environments, including federal and defense networks. This role requires someone who has redesigned enterprise network architectures at scale - not just operating existing networks.

Workplace Type: 80% travel. Hybrid.

Employment Type: Full-Time

Clearance: Active Secret Clearance required; TS/SCI eligibility strongly preferred.

Compensation: Hourly rate is DOE.

Experience Should Include:

• Wide-area network (WAN) and local-area network (LAN) architecture, software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) design and implementation, and SASE deployment, plus carrier-class transport networks including TDM-to-IP/Ethernet migration.
• Legacy circuit optimization, bandwidth/latency analysis, and network cost modeling, including circuit-level inventory and retirement of legacy TDM circuits.
• Building and maintaining a circuit-by-circuit inventory with, at a minimum, Circuit ID, circuit type, bandwidth, A and Z locations, carrier, contract terms (term, expiry, and renewal), and costs (recurring and one-time).
• Reconciling carrier bills to the circuit inventory, including matching invoices line by line to circuits and identifying billing errors, disputes and credits, orphaned or unused circuits, and rate or term variances.
• Telecom Expense Management (TEM), including platforms, processes, carrier invoice audits, disputes, and optimization.
• Network security architecture, including micro-segmentation, Zero Trust networking, and perimeter modernization.
• Multi-classification network environments and cross-domain solution architectures.
• SATCOM, wireless integration, and tactical/edge network design.
• Government telecommunications policy and compliance. Direct experience with DoD network environments (for example, DISN) and policies such as DoDI 8010.01 is a strong advantage and preferred for this role.
• AI-driven network monitoring, anomaly detection, and optimization tooling. Baseline competency with AI-assisted tools is expected; candidates should articulate how AI accelerates network analysis and operations.
• Negotiating with carriers and maintaining a general understanding of available commercial models and contracts.
• Designing and architecting 99.99% uptime hybrid network infrastructure with zero single points of failure. Proven experience with active-active failover across on-premises and cloud environments, sub-second recovery mechanisms, and multi-region/multi-availability-zone redundancy.
• Federal contracting experience.
• Program execution of circuit-by-circuit cutover and retirement, including tracking owners, dependencies, and risks, and coordinating providers and vendors through cutover.
• Standing up a rapid-response (SWAT-style) team to accelerate a running network program, including reading out an in-flight program's leadership, resources, financials, schedule, and obstacles.

Responsibilities:

• Lead network architecture and engineering assessments, including topology analysis, bandwidth/latency optimization, cost modeling, and roadmaps.
• Design SD-WAN/SASE target architectures that support hybrid and multi-cloud workloads across classification levels.
• Assess Zero Trust network readiness and develop implementation roadmaps aligned with compliance timelines.
• Evaluate dependencies between network modernization and cloud migration sequencing.
• Lead the program readout of in-flight network programs (such as TDM circuit retirement or DoDNet migration) and identify where A&M can plug in, what remains, and the obstacles.
• Deploy and run a SWAT team to retire legacy circuits and accelerate migration, with circuit-level tracking and provider coordination.
• Build and keep current the circuit-by-circuit inventory (Circuit ID, type, bandwidth, A/Z locations, carrier, terms, and costs) from carrier, contract, and network sources.
• Reconcile carrier bills to the circuit inventory and apply TEM disciplines to identify savings, billing errors, and circuits to retire.
• Define and integrate findings into A&M's broader engagement scope and deliverables.
• Support practice development through internal training, content creation, and people development.

Qualifications:

• 12+ years of professional experience in network architecture for complex, large enterprises, with consulting or advisory delivery experience.
• Demonstrated experience leading network consolidation, efficiency, performance improvement, or transformation programs.
• Demonstrated Telecom Expense Management (TEM) experience, including reconciling carrier bills to a circuit inventory.
• Federal or DoD network environment experience strongly preferred. Deep transformation experience in regulated industries, such as financial services or healthcare, can substitute.
• Bachelor's degree required; CCIE, CCNP, or equivalent certifications strongly preferred.
• Comfortable with travel up to 80%.
• Active Secret Clearance required; active TS/SCI or eligibility strongly preferred.
• U.S. Citizenship and Residency required.

What Distinguishes a Great Candidate:

Has designed and implemented large scale, highly complex Network transformations at scale - not just operated existing networks. Understands the dependency between network readiness and cloud migration success. Can work across telecom procurement, security, and infrastructure teams. Brings AI-assisted network analysis into the delivery toolkit as standard practice. Has executed circuit-level cutover and retirement programs and can quickly read out an in-flight program to find where to add value. Can reconcile carrier bills to a circuit-by-circuit inventory and use TEM disciplines to turn that data into retirement and savings decisions.