Network Engineer

Caltech is a world-renowned science and engineering institute that marshals some of the world's brightest minds and most innovative tools to address fundamental scientific questions. We thrive on finding and cultivating talented people who are passionate about what they do. Join us and be a part of the diverse Caltech community.

Job Summary

IPAC, in the Physics, Math, and Astronomy Division at Caltech (ipac.caltech.edu), provides science operations, user support, data and archive services, and scientific vision to enhance discovery with observatories both in space and on the ground.IPAC supports NASA, NSF, and privately funded projects and archives including: the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, SPHEREx, the Near-Earth Object Surveyor, the Euclid NASA Science Center, the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, the NASA Ariel/CASE Science Center, the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, the NASA Exoplanet Archive, the Zwicky Transient Facility, the Vera Rubin Observatory, the Keck Observatory Archive and the Deep Synoptic Array (DSA-2000).

The IPAC Support Group Systems Engineering team (ISGSE) provides systems engineering, network engineering, database administration and systems administration support for all IPAC projects as well as the organization at large. We manage tens of petabytes of data, high speed networks, compute clusters and the data centers to house them.

The ISGSE team is looking for an experienced Senior Network Engineer to help design and expand our data networks and assist IPAC projects with network-related operations tasks.

Essential Job Duties

• Specify, install and manage all networking equipment.
• Manage the data center cabling plant.
• Perform network performance analysis and optimizations.
• Implement overall network monitoring tools.
• Evaluate project networking requirements.
• Design and implement improvements to internal network and software architecture to streamline data movement during routine operations.
• Coordinate with networking staff of other Caltech departments, and at other peer institutions.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related field.
• At least 10 years of experience with Cisco, Arista or other major vendor switches, routers and firewalls.
• At least 10 years of experience with Linux, specifically Red Hat or Debian.
• Arista CloudVision experience.
• PaloAlto Firewall experience.
• Network performance measurement and optimization skills.
• Familiar with systems and network security best practices.
• Ability to collaborate with others on a small team.
• Ability to organize and manage priorities across multiple assigned tasks.
• Qualify as a United States (US) person as defined by ITAR regulations - A US person is a citizen of the United States, a lawful permanent resident alien of the US ("Green Card" holder), or individuals granted refugee and Asylee status under US law.

Preferred Qualifications

Besides these basic qualifications, below are a set of skills that will enhance your contributions to this role. Even if these don't describe you or your experience, we would still like to hear from you.

• CCNA or better.
• Strong subnetting skills in both IPv4 and IPv6.
• Experience with LAN and WAN routing protocols.
• Overall data center infrastructure and wide-area networking experience.
• Experience designing and implementing a complete enterprise network infrastructure.
• Experience with High Performance Computing (HPC) environments.
• Experience with cloud computing environments.
• Interest in science, particularly Astronomy: It's what we do.

Required Documents

• Resume
• Cover letter

Applications are due by August 14, 2025.