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Staff Network Engineer
Blackboard Inc.
Reston, VA, United States
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With nearly 20,000 organizational customers and millions of student users, Blackboard is the world's leading education technology company. We are seeking an experienced technical leader who has hands-on experience with the business and technical considerations of managing large scale enterprise networks.
Blackboard has recently engaged with a well-known global services organization to manage and operate its large and disparate hosting infrastructure. As principal network architect, you will be the category leader within Blackboard, and responsible for working with our vendor to develop and maintain a network infrastructure which is highly reliable, performant and cost effective. Directly reporting to the VP of Cloud Services, you will ensure that our network is sound, efficient, and supports improved customer satisfaction by reaching an infrastructure availability SLA of 99.95%. You will work as a part of the Cloud Services management team responsible for the architecture, engineering, vendor management and operations of the network infrastructure for Blackboard's 30 legacy data centers and public cloud infrastructure. These data centers support 15,000 images, 14 petabytes of storage, over 400 network devices, and support thousands of clients throughout the world. Because the network is the first point of entry and a target for DDoS attacks, experience with security and DDoS mitigation technologies is also critical. While we have many data centers with diverse architectures and equipment, our core networks are principally built on Brocade converged switches and routers, Citrix load balancers, and Cisco firewalls.
Specifically, you will be responsible for:
• Working with our Chief Architect and our vendor, contributing to, reviewing, and approving new and improved network architectures across our enterprise
• Overseeing our vendor’s day-to-day operations to ensure that operations are proceeding as planned
• Constantly evaluating our current network architecture in light of industry advancements, and proposing and building business cases for changes where increased reliability, cost effectiveness or performance can be achieved
• Handling our network budget and spend, including local and wide area network connectivity, as well as network and network security devices
• Developing, driving, and reporting on the key performance metrics of the operations
• Communicating risks, outages, and changes that may affect the uptime of our clients to both peers and leadership within the Cloud Services Team
• Ensuring that the infrastructure's operating procedures meet or exceed current standards.
• Participating in the development and evolution of our IT service management program, ensuring consistent and predictable service outcomes
Professional Qualifications
Required Skills:
• 7 years of experience in a large scale operational role
• Experience directing the operations of a managed service provider
• Experience implementing network, storage, & systems management tools
• Collaborator with strong attention to detail
• Process-oriented with strong organization and project management skills
• Ability to identify, prioritize and escalate issues as needed
• Experience with CI/CD, Cloud Computing
• Experience with NAS and other storage technologies
• Experience with various flavors of OS and virtualization technologies
• Experience with Network Security including DDOS mitigation
• Bachelor's Degree in related field or equivalent education and/or experience
Preferred Skills:
• Experience with management SNMP monitoring systems
• Experience with Chef and/or Puppet, (Ansible, Docker, Mesos a plus)
• Strong human relations skills to select, develop, mentor, discipline, and reward employees
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Strong interpersonal and presentation skills for interacting with team members and clients
• Ability to implement disruptive technology without negatively impacting the business
• Ability to champion & handle change at an organizational level
• Industry certifications (e.g. CCNA/CCNP, ITIL)
• Industry Architecture and Design: Current understanding of the state of system, storage & network major players and quality between vendors
This job description is not designed to contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities that are required. Nothing in this job description restricts management's right to assign or reassign duties and responsibilities at any time.
Blackboard is an equal employment opportunity/affirmative action employer and considers qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, gender, age, color, religion, national origin, marital status, disability, sexual orientation, or any other protected factor.
Location/Division: Reston, VA, USA Job Requisition: BB-1051