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Network Engineer

SAIC

Springfield, VAJob$80–120K/yrSeen todaySeen in employer's feed today

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At a glance

Compensation
$80–120K/yr
Location
Springfield, VA
Work Authorization
US work authorization required

Olive lists jobs from US employers, including remote roles you can work from the United States.

Requirements

Credentials this posting asks for.

DoD 8140/8570 IAT Level II CertificationTop Secret clearance

Job overview

SAIC is hiring a Network Engineer to engineer and operate a classified enterprise network connecting diplomatic posts worldwide. The role includes troubleshooting end-to-end faults, supporting incidents across time zones, implementing controlled network changes, and designing post network architectures. It may require occasional international travel and requires U.S. citizenship, an active TOP SECRET clearance with SCI eligibility, and the ability to obtain cryptographic access authorization.

Skills & qualifications

RequiredNice to have

Skills

Routing and SwitchingBGPOSPFVLANsWANVPN and TunnelingQoSCircuit TroubleshootingFirewall SecurityACL and Policy DesignPacket Capture AnalysisHAIPE EncryptorsType 1 EncryptionCSfC ArchitectureSatellite Circuit EngineeringLow-Bandwidth Circuit EngineeringHigh-Latency Circuit EngineeringSD-WANNetwork AutomationInfrastructure as CodeNetwork Assurance ToolsNetwork Modeling ToolsEnterprise Monitoring PlatformsServiceNow ITSMServiceNow CMDB

Qualifications

Bachelor's in Technical Discipline or Equivalent Experience5 Years Network EngineeringCCNP-Level Knowledge or EquivalentDoD 8140/8570 IAT Level II CertificationU.S. CitizenshipActive TOP SECRET Clearance With SCI EligibilityCryptographic Access Authorization EligibilityOn-Call RotationOccasional TravelHAIPE Encryptor ExperienceCSfC Architecture ExperienceFederal Overseas Post Experience

Full job description

Description

SAIC is hiring a Network Engineer to help engineer and operate a classified enterprise network that reaches diplomatic posts in nearly every country on earth. Every encrypted circuit, every router at a remote post, and every piece of transport in between is part of one system — and you will help keep it running and make it better.

What makes this different from commercial network engineering is the operating constraint. You cannot drive to the site. When a post goes down you are working through local staff across a dozen time zones, often over a constrained or satellite circuit, sometimes with no out-of-band path because the path you would use is the one that failed. Engineers who are good at this are good at reasoning from incomplete information and getting it right the first time, because there may not be a second attempt that day.

This role may require occasional international travel.

What You Will Do:

  • Engineer and operate securing routing, switching, and transport across a worldwide classified network, including the encrypted transport layer and the in-line network encryptors that protect it.

  • Troubleshoot complex faults end to end — distinguishing circuit, transport, encryption, routing, and device causes — and restore service to posts under operational time pressure.

  • Provide Tier II and Tier III escalation support for incidents the service desk cannot resolve, including an on-call rotation that covers every time zone the mission operates in.

  • Design and implement network changes through formal configuration control, with the test, back-out plan, and post-change verification done before the window opens rather than improvised inside it.

  • Engineer post network architectures, including site surveys, equipment refresh, bandwidth and capacity planning, and the design compromises that constrained circuits force.

  • Implement access control to sensitive network devices, and hardening standards, and remediate scan and assessment findings within the accreditation timelines.

  • Operate network monitoring, performance management, and configuration compliance tooling so that problems surface before a post reports them.

  • Document designs, configurations, and runbooks to a standard that lets the next engineer sustain what you built without calling you.

Why This Role:

Few networks in the world have this footprint, and almost none carry this consequence. The work is visible: when it is right, people in hard places can communicate securely, and when it is not, they cannot. You will see the whole system rather than one layer of it, and the environment is modernizing — encrypted transport, cryptographic modernization, and network assurance tooling are all in motion, not sitting on a roadmap.

Qualifications

Required Education & Experience:

  • Bachelor’s degree in a technical discipline and five years of enterprise network engineering experience. Four additional years of relevant experience may substitute for the degree.

  • Working knowledge of routing and switching fundamentals — BGP, OSPF, VLANs, and the ability to reason about convergence and failure behavior in a large topology, not just configure it.

  • Working knowledge of WAN: VPN and tunneling, QoS, circuit troubleshooting, and working with carriers and transport providers.

  • Firewall and network security experience, including ACL and policy design.

  • The ability to read a packet capture and reason from it when the symptom and the cause are not in the same place.

  • CCNP-level knowledge or equivalent demonstrated experience.

  • DoD 8140 / 8570 IAT Level II certification (for example Security+ CE), current.

  • Willingness to take on-call rotation, support off-hours maintenance windows aligned to overseas time zones, and travel occasionally in support of post work.

Required Clearance:

  • U.S. citizenship

  • Active TOP SECRET clearance with SCI eligibility, and the ability to obtain cryptographic access authorization.

Nice to Have:

  • Experience with HAIPE-compliant inline network encryptors or other Type 1 encryption in an operational network.

  • Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC) architecture experience.

  • Satellite, low-bandwidth, or high-latency circuit engineering — and the instinct for what breaks on them that does not break on fiber.

  • Department of State or other federal overseas post experience.

  • SD-WAN, network automation, or infrastructure-as-code for network configuration.

  • Network assurance and modeling tools, enterprise monitoring platforms, and ServiceNow ITSM and CMDB.

  • CCIE, or vendor certification on the deployed platform.

Target salary range: $80,001 - $120,000. The estimate displayed represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience and other factors.

REQNUMBER: 2618760

SAIC is a premier technology integrator, solving our nation's most complex modernization and systems engineering challenges across the defense, space, federal civilian, and intelligence markets. Our robust portfolio of offerings includes high-end solutions in systems engineering and integration; enterprise IT, including cloud services; cyber; software; advanced analytics and simulation; and training. We are a team of 23,000 strong driven by mission, united purpose, and inspired by opportunity. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, SAIC has annual revenues of approximately $6.5 billion. For more information, visit saic.com. For information on the benefits SAIC offers, see Working at SAIC. EOE AA M/F/Vet/Disability

How this job compares

Set against the 4,081 open Network Engineer jobs on Olive Jobs, counted November 4, 2026.

Pay
  • This posting$80–120K/yr
  • Virginia median$120–182K/yr312 salary ranges
  • US median$116–191K/yr3,166 salary ranges

This range's midpoint, $100K, is 34% below the Virginia median midpoint ($151K) — in the lowest quarter of Network Engineer salary ranges in Virginia.

Openings
Olive Jobs lists 389 open Network Engineer jobs in Virginia and 4,081 across the US. 4% of them nationwide are listed as remote or flexible.
Hiring the most in Virginia
Experience
This posting asks for at least 5 years of experience; Network Engineer postings that state a minimum ask for 5 years at the median (3,527 postings).
Education
1,204 of the 4,081 open Network Engineer jobs (30%) ask for a bachelor's degree or higher.

Counted across the open, public US postings on Olive Jobs on November 4, 2026. Pay medians are the middle values of the low ends and of the high ends of postings that list both ends of a range in the same cadence (a yearly salary or an hourly rate); a range's midpoint is halfway between its ends. Pay and experience figures resting on fewer than 20 postings are left out.

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