The Lead Senior Network Operations Center (NOC) Engineer (Tier 3) serves as the highest technical escalation point within the global NOC organization. This role delivers advanced troubleshooting expertise, architecture-level insight, and deep subject matter knowledge across complex, multi-vendor network environments. The Tier 3 Engineer leads root-cause analysis efforts, oversees major incident response, influences network design standards, and partners closely with engineering teams to drive network stability, scalability, and operational excellence.
Responsibilities:- Acts as the final escalation point for all high-severity network incidents, performing advanced packet analysis, protocol decoding, and cross-platform correlation.
- Leads deep-dive root cause analysis (RCA), producing engineering-quality post-incident reports and recommending long-term corrective and preventive actions.
- Directs network recovery efforts during major outages involving routing instability, security incidents, hardware failures, or cloud connectivity disruptions.
- Demonstrates expert proficiency with Palo Alto firewalls, Palo Alto Cloud Security, and Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange services, including troubleshooting complex, multi-tier network and security architectures.
- Applies strong knowledge of security automation, API-driven provisioning, and lifecycle management within large-scale environments, including experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) pipelines.
- Provides expert-level support for Cisco ASA, Palo Alto NGFW, IPSec architectures, segmentation policies, and enterprise security posture validation.
- Proactively validates, enforces, and improves security architectures and industry best practices.
- Defines and governs Zero Trust access architectures using Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) and Zscaler Private Access (ZPA), enabling secure user-to-application connectivity without traditional network-based trust models.
- Demonstrates mastery of packet analysis and monitoring tools, including BlueCat, SolarWinds, APCON, Wireshark, and NetFlow/sFlow platforms.
- Develops and maintains automation scripts to support configuration validation, monitoring, and incident response workflows.
- Evaluates, integrates, and optimizes new operational tools and observability platforms to enhance network visibility and reliability.
- Partners with Network Engineering teams to validate new designs, perform pre-deployment testing, and influence architectural and operational standards.
- Mentors junior and mid-level NOC engineers through technical coaching, lab guidance, and development of training materials.
- Engages directly with vendors on escalated TAC cases, hardware issues, and architectural reviews.
Qualifications:- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience.
- 8+ years of enterprise network operations or engineering experience supporting large-scale, mission-critical environments.
- Expert-level knowledge of network security architecture, with deep expertise in Palo Alto and Zscaler platforms.
- Extensive hands-on experience with Cisco, Juniper, Brocade, Palo Alto, Aruba, and F5 technologies.
- Proven ability to lead major incidents under pressure with clear communication and strong technical leadership.
- Preferred Certifications; CCNP, CCIE, JNCIP/JNCIE, PCNSE, F5 Certified Admin or Engineer, AWS Advanced Networking
Special Requirements:- Participation in a 24x7 Tier 3 on-call escalation rotation.
- Availability to support after-hours change execution and major incident coverage as needed.
Special FactorsSponsorshipVanguard is not offering visa sponsorship for this position.
