IT Engineer - Network

Vivmark Residential exists to set the mark for what home can be. Formed through the merger of AvalonBay Communities and Equity Residential, Vivmark brings together two industry leaders with a shared commitment to excellence, innovation, and delivering exceptional living experiences. Our vision is to be the most trusted and best-performing rental housing company in America - one that continues to get better as it grows. And we're looking for people who want to help us do it.

As an owner, developer, and manager of more than 180,000 apartment homes in major markets across the US, we have the scale to offer something most companies can't. At Vivmark, team members move up and across functions, markets, and disciplines, building lasting careers. We invest in team members' growth, development, and capabilities that make them and us better, and we hold ourselves to the highest standard as an employer.

The best people want to work here. We hope you're one of them.

The IT Network Engineer designs, secures, and maintains a reliable and highly available hybrid network spanning Vivmark Residential's datacenters, corporate offices, residential properties, and public cloud. The engineer is an expert in enterprise routing and switching across Cisco (including Meraki), Juniper, Arista, and Palo Alto platforms, with working depth in application delivery (F5 Distributed Cloud, Cloudflare), cloud networking (Azure and AWS), and DDI. Security is a design input for every network decision: the engineer works daily with Security Operations and builds segmentation, inspection, encryption, and access control into the network from the start. The engineer is responsible for successfully managing initiatives related to the implementation of all individually assigned infrastructure components, including the configuration and management of load balancing and edge technologies such as F5 and Cloudflare and DDI technologies such as Infoblox. Acts as a key technical member for various project teams and as a technical resource for network engineering counterparts across the merged organization. The incumbent is responsible for providing infrastructure support across multiple disparate technologies as part of the standard escalation procedure. Anticipates IT industry direction, including SASE and zero trust networking, and makes recommendations to support current and future infrastructure needs and projects.

Please note: Our current onsite work schedule requires attendance from Monday through Thursday each week, with remote work permitted on Fridays.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

 Network Design and Operations:

●         Designs, configures, and manages the routing and switching infrastructure enterprise wide across datacenter, corporate office, and property environments using Cisco (including Meraki), Arista, and Juniper platforms.

●         Manages internal and external routing using protocols such as BGP, iBGP, OSPF, and EIGRP, including multi-homed internet edge, VRF-based segmentation, and datacenter interconnects.

●         Administers wired and wireless networking at properties and offices, including Juniper Mist, traditional Cisco wireless LAN controllers (WLC), and Meraki, and supports these platforms through their transition. Maintains 802.1X wireless authentication in partnership with the Identity team.

●         Administers the DNS, DHCP, and IPAM platform (Infoblox) and supports external DNS services.

●         Maintains network monitoring, alerting, and capacity reporting (SolarWinds Orion or equivalent) and acts on trends before they become incidents.

Application Delivery and Edge Services:

●         Accountable for the management of internal and internet-facing application delivery, including load balancing on F5 Distributed Cloud (Customer Edge) and public application protection and traffic management on Cloudflare (DNS, WAF, TLS, and tunnels).

●         Manages TLS and certificate lifecycle for load-balanced and proxied services in coordination with the Identity team.

●         Troubleshoots application delivery issues end to end across the edge, perimeter firewall, load balancer, and server layers.

Cloud and Hybrid Networking:

●         Designs, implements, and supports hybrid connectivity between on-premises and public cloud, including Azure ExpressRoute, VPN gateways, hub-and-spoke virtual networks, and Private Link, and AWS Direct Connect and Transit Gateway, with BGP route policy and segmentation.

●         Supports cloud network security constructs such as network security groups, virtual firewalls, private endpoints, and hybrid DNS resolution.

●         Uses automation and infrastructure as code (Ansible, Terraform, Python, or PowerShell) to build, deploy, audit, and back up network and cloud network configurations.

Network Security and Cyber Awareness:

●         Maintains current awareness of the threat landscape and applies it to network design and operations. Partners with Security Operations on segmentation, firewall policy (Palo Alto, managed through Panorama), TLS inspection, VPN, and zero trust access.

●         Hardens network devices and keeps firmware and software current, supporting vulnerability remediation, patching, and lifecycle planning.

●         Supports security incident response with traffic analysis, log review, packet capture, and containment actions on network devices.

●         Secures the network management plane (AAA, MFA, configuration backup, change control) and supports audit and compliance requests for network controls.

Projects and Continuous Improvement:

●         Recommends, plans and manages the implementation of hardware and software as they relate to assigned infrastructure components.

●         Participates in various IT projects intended to continually improve/upgrade the infrastructure, such as evaluation of new software and hardware required to meet a business need or to make a process more cost effective.

●         Accountable for the successful delivery of assigned projects; provides accurate and consistent status reports.

●         Interfaces with project team and Infrastructure Group members to ensure assigned project charters are consistent with Group objectives and goals; applies program management approach to all project related activities.

●         Researches new technologies for infrastructure strategies and other related projects; evaluates and recommends new software or systems to meet company requirements; manages the implementation of changes in such systems.

●         Manages the maintenance of infrastructure; ensures compatibility and compliance with regulations, contracts and licensing agreements.

●         Develops and maintains procedures, runbooks, and network diagrams, and ensures documentation exists for all aspects of installations and operation.

●         Provides input to the establishment of technical standards and procedures.

●         Participates in disaster recovery design and test events for the network.

Collaboration and Support:

●         Provides third level support to IT personnel and end users, as necessary.

●         Partners with network engineering counterparts from the merged organization on integration, coexistence, and consolidation, providing technical guidance and knowledge transfer.

●         Assists to coordinate tasks across the different team members, provides mentoring to other team members, and builds cross-technology knowledge across the Enterprise Infrastructure Operations team.

●         Acts as liaison between Vivmark and vendors and carriers, as needed.

●         Performs situation analysis and makes recommendations for solving problems.

●         Focuses on the provision of a stable performance environment, enterprise-wide, by monitoring and analyzing problems that occur, ensuring they are identified and solved as rapidly and efficiently as possible.

●         Represents the Company in a professional manner at all times.  Consistently maintains a professional, courteous attitude when dealing with residents, coworkers and the general public.

●         Performs other duties, as necessary.

 The Company may revise this job description from time to time as business needs require.  It is not intended to be an exhaustive listing of all the functions of the job, nor limit the Company’s right to assign other functions to an employee in this position.  This job description does not constitute a written or implied contract of employment.

 JOB QUALIFICATION REQUIREMENTS:

●         Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline; equivalent experience is acceptable.

●         Minimum of seven years related experience in enterprise level IT environments performing infrastructure engineering, planning, implementation and management, with network engineering as the primary focus.

●         Cisco CCNA certification or equivalent demonstrated knowledge is required; CCNP Enterprise preferred.

●         Expert knowledge of enterprise routing and switching, including BGP, OSPF or EIGRP, VRFs, VLANs, and high availability design, on Cisco (NX-OS, IOS-XE, traditional WLCs, and Meraki) and at least one additional vendor such as Arista or Juniper.

●         Strong cyber awareness and a security-first approach to design and change. Working knowledge of firewalls (Palo Alto preferred), segmentation, TLS inspection, VPN, DDoS mitigation, and zero trust and SASE concepts.

●         Working knowledge of load balancing and application delivery, including TLS and PKI concepts. Hands-on experience with F5 (Distributed Cloud or BIG-IP) and Cloudflare strongly preferred.

●         Working knowledge of cloud networking in Azure (required) and AWS (preferred), including virtual networks, private connectivity (ExpressRoute, Direct Connect), VPN, hybrid DNS, and routing.

●         Experience with DDI (Infoblox preferred), wireless (Cisco WLC and Meraki; Juniper Mist preferred), and network monitoring tools.

●         Experience with scripting and automation (Python, PowerShell, Ansible, or Terraform).

●         Minimum of one year experience in project management; demonstrated experience managing projects in a cross-functional environment, including making project decisions, monitoring progress and reporting results.

●         Ability to take an ambiguous requirement and independently drive it to a documented, implemented, and supportable design.

●         Forward thinking, with the ability to assist in the planning of infrastructure requirements two to four years in advance and to adapt quickly to rapidly changing technology and apply it to business needs.

●         Excellent technical knowledge and aptitude in the areas of networks, network topologies, and advanced troubleshooting techniques; ability to solve infrastructure issues and manage the associated performance and capacity.

●         Experience effectively communicating with a broad base of end users and multiple management layers; strong customer service skills; ability to explain complex problems or situations.

●         Good judgment and analytical skills; strong follow-up and organizational skills.

●         Ability to conduct and prepare feasibility studies, including estimates for costs, time and resources, and to complete cost/benefit analysis.

Other Requirements:  As a Vivmark Residential team member, you represent Vivmark.  While you are on the job, Vivmark Residential expects you to wear clothing and accessories that are appropriate in a professional business environment.  If a uniform is required at the property, you are expected to wear it.  Refer to Vivmark’s Grooming Standards and Dress Code Guidelines for additional information.

●         Flexibility to provide after-hours or weekend support for maintenance windows and incident response, including participation in an on-call rotation.

●         Travel to Chicago-area datacenters and other company locations as needed.

Salary:  $111,000 -$136,000 per year; in addition to base salary, a discretionary 10.5% annual bonus is provided.

The successful candidate's starting pay will be determined based on job-related skills, experience, and qualifications.

 PHYSICAL AND VISUAL ACTIVITIES:

 Ability to hear and speak well enough to converse verbally over the phone and in-person (expressing or exchanging ideas by means of the spoken or written word). Ability to interpret, evaluate and communicate detailed written or verbal instructions to others accurately and easily.   Able to see well enough to use the computer effectively and read written communications.  Ability to lift, push, pull or carry up to 15 pounds for the dissemination of documents, supplies, materials, etc. to various locations throughout the office/facility. May be required to climb stairs depending on the property structure.

The above describes the physical and visual activities that are commonly associated with the performance of the essential functions of this job.  “Commonly associated” is not intended to mean always or only.  Reasonable accommodation will be provided as required by law to enable otherwise qualified employees with a known disability to perform the essential functions of the job.

Vivmark Residential exists to set the mark for what home can be. Our vision is to be the most trusted and best-performing rental housing company in America - one that continues to get better as it grows. And we're looking for people who want to help us do it.

As an owner, developer, and manager of more than 180,000 apartment homes in major markets across the US, we have the scale to offer something most companies can't. At Vivmark, team members move up and across functions, markets, and disciplines, building lasting careers. We invest in team members’ growth, development, and capabilities that make them and us better, and we hold ourselves to the highest standard as an employer.

The best people want to work here. We hope you're one of them.

Vivmark Values

At Vivmark Residential, like our residents, our employees come from everywhere. A richly diverse work environment captures top talent, cultivates the best ideas, and creates the widest possible platform for success. By focusing on inclusion, these differences are harnessed to create value — in ideas, business practices, relationships, and employee engagement. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we are committed to maintaining a diverse, inclusive and equitable work environment where our employees can thrive. 

All aspects of the employment process are merit-based. Every Vivmark employee is expected to maintain a work environment that is free from discrimination and harassment. Vivmark Residential does not discriminate against any employee or job applicant because of race, religion, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender, sexual/gender identity/expression, age, pregnancy (including childbirth, lactation or related medical conditions), physical or mental disability, national origin, citizenship status, military (including uniformed service member or protected veteran) status, marital status, genetic characteristic or information, ancestry or any other characteristic protected by law. Vivmark Residential also prohibits retaliation against individuals who report harassment or discrimination, or participate in investigations into such conduct.