Senior Cisco ACI Engineer

Description This position is not eligible for sponsorship, including OPT. Candidates must be a US Citizen or Green Card Holder Job Summary: The Senior Cisco ACI Engineer is a subject matter expert responsible for designing, implementing, and optimizing Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) solutions. This role includes mentoring and training team members, driving automation initiatives, and ensuring best practices for scalable and secure network operations. Key Responsibilities: Architecture & Deployment:

• Key member in deployment of new Cisco ACI fabrics including spine-leaf topology and APIC controllers.
• Continued support in day to day operations once ACI is deployed.

Configuration & Policy Management:

• Define and implement ACI policies, tenants, VRFs, bridge domains, and contracts to meet business objectives.

Leadership & Training:

• Provide technical guidance, mentorship, and hands-on training to junior engineers and operations staff.
• Develop internal knowledge-sharing sessions and documentation for ACI best practices.

Integration & Optimization:

• Integrate ACI with virtualization platforms (VMware, Hyper-V) and cloud environments.

Monitoring & Troubleshooting:

• Utilize Nexus Dashboard, Catalyst Center, and other tools to monitor ACI health and resolve complex issues.
• Participate in an on-call rotation

Collaboration:

• Partner with network architects, security teams, and application owners to ensure secure and scalable deployments.

Required Skills & Qualifications:

• Strong understanding of the TCP/IP stack and relation to network technologies
• Ability to administer a mixture of platforms and technologies including routers, switches, firewalls, and load balancers.
• Expert-level knowledge of Cisco ACI architecture, APIC controllers, and Nexus 9000 series switches.
• Experience in building ACI environments from design to implementation.
• Sr. level troubleshooting skills in ACI and traditional data center route/switch
• Strong understanding of network protocols (BGP, OSPF, VXLAN, MPLS).
• Proven experience in mentoring and training technical teams.
• Familiarity with ACI integrations (VMware vCenter, ServiceNow, cloud platforms).
• Excellent leadership, communication, and problem-solving skills.
• Loves to work in a collaborative team environment.
• Tier-4 Off-hour support may be required for maintenance windows and/or troubleshooting
• Understanding of PCI security standards and practices
• In-depth understanding of network documentation, physical and logical diagrams, and being able to provide detailed diagrams of solutions for engineers to follow and build from.
• Evaluating new technologies and creating/performing proof of concepts
• On-call Support for Network Operations
• CCIE level experience and knowledge

Preferred Qualifications:

• Cisco certifications such as CCNP Data Center or CCIE Data Center.
• Experience with Nexus Dashboard, Catalyst Center, and ACI Multi-Site Orchestrator.
• Knowledge of DevOps practices and CI/CD pipelines for network automation.
• Proficiency in automation tools (Ansible, Python scripting).
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines with ACI
• Experience in firewalls and load balancers
• Experience in Infrastructure as Code

Education & Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field.
• 7+ years of experience in network engineering with at least 5 years focused on Cisco ACI.
• Demonstrated ability to lead projects and train team members effectively.