Network and Systems Administrator Support Desk

Job Summary

Based at our office in Annapolis Maryland, you will be a core member of our 24/7/365 operations team, responsible for providing networking and IT administration for the Mission Critical Emergency Communications Service — delivering mission-critical public safety communications to customers around the clock without interruption. You will serve as a senior technical resource across our operations team, providing escalation-level support, proactively monitoring systems, executing upgrades, and ensuring Mission Critical's IT infrastructure always operates at peak performance and security.

You will design, implement, and maintain network operations across Mission Critical's global offices and cloud deployments, with a strong DevOps mindset — automating workflows, managing infrastructure as code, and building repeatable, resilient processes. You will be responsible for maintaining comprehensive documentation of IT policies, procedures, hardware, and software. This role requires availability for on-call duties and scheduled shift rotations to ensure continuous coverage. Travel to our offices and data centers in the UK, Japan, and USA may be required periodically.

Key Responsibility Areas

• Provide L3 technical support through Mission Critical's 24/7/365 service desk, including on-call rotations and shift-based coverage; respond to, triage, escalate, and resolve incidents in accordance with defined SLAs.
• Proactively monitor all IT systems, networks, and cloud infrastructure using observability tooling; identify and remediate issues before they impact operations.
• Design, deploy, and maintain Mission Critical's IT networks— including cloud-hosted environments—with a focus on resilience, redundancy, and security; augment infrastructure to support new projects and services.
• Ensure IT systems meet security and compliance standards; plan and execute upgrades, patches, and hardening activities.
• Maintain and administer user accounts, access controls, and application software licenses.
• Conduct regular audits of IT systems and software; maintain an accurate, up-to-date asset register.
• Document policies, procedures, infrastructure, and system configurations to a professional standard.
• Analyze, test, and deploy software patches and updates in a controlled, risk-managed manner.
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to junior team members; contribute to knowledge base articles and training materials.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a field related to IT, computer science, or telecommunications.
• Juniper Engineer level certification in both Routing and Switching (JNCIP) and Network Security (JNCIP-SEC).
• Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE), and Red Hat Certified Specialist in Security certifications.

Required Experience

• At least three years of senior-level experience in systems and network administration, ideally within a 24/7 operations or NOC environment, with demonstrable on-call and shift rotation experience in a missioncritical setting.
• ISP/Telecommunications background: Proven experience in an ISP or carrier-grade networking environment.
• Experience deploying and maintaining virtualized Linux servers (on-premises and cloud).
• Experience designing and implementing secure, robust network architectures including VPNs, VLANs, and firewall configurations; hands-on experience with Cisco, Juniper, and open-source tools such as FRR routing.
• Strong scripting and automation proficiency in Bash, Python, and Ansible.
• Experience with Linux on virtualized platforms (OpenStack, OpenShift, VMware, Microsoft Azure), with strong expertise in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), including Subscriptions, Licensing, IdM Server, and Satellite Server.
• Experience configuring, troubleshooting, and hardening VMs and servers using Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS).
• Hands-on experience with monitoring and observability stacks: Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, or Thanos.

Required Skills

• Excellent written and oral English communication skills, including the ability to write clear incident reports and post-mortems.
• Ability to remain composed and make sound decisions under pressure during critical incidents; strong professional relationship skills in a fast-paced, always-on environment.
• Routing & Switching: Deep expertise in IP routing and switching, including MPLS, BGP, OSPF, EIGRP, RIP, Multicast, VLANs, Inter-VLANs, Spanning Tree, BFD, VXLAN, eVPN, IS-IS, and VRRP.
• VPN & Security: Solid experience with IPSec VPNs, SSL VPNs, and advanced firewall configuration.
• Network Troubleshooting: Strong ability to diagnose and resolve complex, time-sensitive networking issues efficiently.
• Systems Administration: Installation, configuration, hardening, maintenance, and patching of network and server infrastructure; advanced troubleshooting in disk/storage management including LVM, RAW, XFS, EXT4, and BTRFS.
• Monitoring & Observability: Configuring, troubleshooting, and managing systems including Grafana, Prometheus, Elasticsearch, and related tooling.
• DevOps Practices: Familiarity with Git-based workflows and automated deployment strategies in production environments.

Highly Regarded Skills and Attainments

• Cloud certification (Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud) and experience with Terraform or similar IaC tools for cloud provisioning.
• Cybersecurity training and certification (e.g., CompTIA Security+, CISSP)
• Experience contributing to DevOps or SRE frameworks, including CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Ansible), and version-controlled configuration management.
• Quality of Service (QoS) configuration on routers, switches, and firewalls.
• Experience with network management tools (e.g., Nagios) and protocols (e.g., SNMP); expertise in authentication technologies, particularly Active Directory and LDAP.
• Familiarity with ITIL or similar service management frameworks relevant to 24/7 operations.

Right to Work

The nature of this role requires permanent, full-time US working rights. Employment is subject to drug screening, background check, and possible security clearance. Due to the 24/7/365 nature of the role, candidates must be willing and able to participate in shift rotations and on-call schedules as required.