Job Title: Network ISE Engineer (SME)
Job Category: Information Technology
Time Type: Full time
Minimum Clearance Required to Start: Secret
Employee Type: Regular-Long Term Assignment
Percentage of Travel Required: Up to 10%
Type of Travel: Local
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Opportunity:
We are seeking a Network ISE SME our team at AFRICOM in Stuttgart, Germany.
Applicant should be a Cisco ISE expert, not a general network engineer who has only supported ISE occasionally. The successful candidate will be the primary technical owner of Cisco Identity Services Engine in a production enterprise environment, with deep, hands-on experience designing, deploying, operating, and troubleshooting ISE at scale. This role requires proven expertise in Network Access Control (NAC), 802.1X, policy sets, profiling, posture, guest/BYOD, TACACS+, and identity-based enforcement across wired, wireless, and remote access.
The goal is to deliver a rich feature set, high availability, and exceptional performance of automation and orchestration tools while maintaining secure, mission-ready network infrastructure. This role requires an innovative, collaborative professional who can bridge traditional network engineering with modern automation and DevOps practices to support AFRICOM operations.
Responsibilities:
Deploy, configure, and maintain secure DoD enterprise and datacenter network infrastructure, ensuring high availability and mission readiness across geographically dispersed sites.
• Administer Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) for secure endpoint access, policy enforcement, and Zero Trust architecture support. Design, implement, and maintain highly reliable and scalable network systems.
• Proven expertise in Network Access Control (NAC), 802.1X, policy sets, profiling, posture, guest/BYOD, TACACS+, and identity-based enforcement across wired, wireless, and remote access.
• Configure and maintain complex enterprise routing and switching environments utilizing standard protocols and advanced transport methods (DMVPN, MPLS Segment-Routing).
• Manage and troubleshoot datacenter network fabrics using Cisco ACI (Application Centric Infrastructure) and Cisco Nexus switching platforms.
• Deploy, manage, and update Palo Alto and Cisco Firepower firewalls, including centralized management platforms (Panorama, FMC).
• Provision, key, and maintain KG encryptors (e.g., TACLANE) to secure classified and mission-critical traffic.
• Develop automation frameworks and leverage network automation tools (Ansible, Python, REST APIs) to streamline deployments and support Software-Defined Access (SDA).
• Maintain core network services including F5 load balancers and Infoblox for DNS, DHCP, and IPAM.
• Proactively identify and resolve performance bottlenecks and single points of failure.
• Create a roadmap for maturing DevOps practices and drive adoption of Infrastructure as Code (Ansible).
• Gather and analyze metrics for performance tuning, fault discovery, and after-action reporting.
• Work with operations teams to build automation use-cases and improve reliability through rigorous testing and release procedures.
Qualifications:
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related technical discipline.
Active Secret clearance (ability to obtain Top Secret as required).
• 5–10+ years of practical network engineering experience in mid-to-large scale enterprise or military environments.
• Strong programming/scripting ability with Python, Go, or PowerShell.
• Hands-on experience with automation and orchestration tools (Ansible, VMware Aria Suite, ServiceNow).
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code, particularly Ansible.
• Must meet DoD 8570/8140 IAT Level II baseline certification (e.g., Security+…