Data Center Controls Network Engineer

Key Responsibilities

• Define controls, automation, and OT network requirements for AI data center campuses.
• Develop reference architectures, engineering standards, and reusable design templates.
• Review and develop basis-of-design and functional design documents, including OT network diagrams, IP/VLAN schemes, telemetry architectures, data flow diagrams, and commissioning requirements.
• Design OT and infrastructure network architectures, including physical topology, logical topology, IP addressing, subnetting, VLANs, routing, switching, redundancy, segmentation, firewall policy coordination, out-of-band management, monitoring, and remote access patterns.
• Develop day-two network operations requirements, including change management, configuration backups, golden configurations, monitoring thresholds, firmware lifecycle, rollback plans, and post-change validation.
• Partner with electrical, mechanical, IT/networking, security, and operations teams to ensure OT network systems align with GPU deployments, campus-wide telemetry, and failure-domain isolation requirements.
• Define integration patterns and protocol requirements across BACnet/IP, BACnet MSTP, Modbus TCP/RTU, OPC UA, IEC-61850 MMS/GOOSE, MQTT, SNMP, syslog, NTP/PTP, IRIG-B, and vendor-specific interfaces.
• Lead technical evaluation of controls integrators, network equipment suppliers, design consultants, contractors, and commissioning agents.
• Review network equipment submittals, configurations, firmware assumptions, certifications, test reports, and quality documentation.
• Support factory witnessed testing (FWT), site acceptance testing, network readiness checks, failover testing, and integrated systems testing.
• Troubleshoot complex controls network issues including packet loss, latency, duplicate IPs, routing errors, firewall drops, protocol incompatibilities, time synchronization drift, and intermittent device communication failures.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of relevant experience in controls engineering, industrial automation, OT networking, mission-critical facilities, or similar critical infrastructure environments.
• Strong expertise in resilient OT network architecture, implementation, troubleshooting, and lifecycle support.
• Experience with OT/IT boundary design, secure enterprise integration, firewall policy design, redundant topologies, out-of-band management, and monitoring.
• Hands-on experience with Layer 3 OT network design, including IP addressing, subnetting, routing, VRFs, ACLs, inter-VLAN traffic control, and network segmentation.
• Hands-on experience with Layer 2 security and switching controls, including MACsec, port security, loop prevention, and switch-level access control.
• Hands-on experience in designing resilient OT network topologies using industrial redundancy protocols and architectures such as PRP, HSR, Cisco REP, RSTP/MSTP, and ring or star topologies.
• Hands-on experience in designing resilient infrastructure network architectures using HSRP/VRRP, spine-leaf topologies, redundant uplinks, and failure-domain isolation.
• Hands-on experience with industrial and infrastructure network equipment such as Cisco switches/routers, Juniper switches/routers, Palo Alto firewalls, Rockwell Automation Stratix switches, Siemens Ruggedcom or comparable industrial networking platforms.
• Experience with network management and observability platforms such as Cisco Catalyst Center (DNA Center), Palo Alto Panorama, Juniper Mist, industrial NMS tools, packet brokers, and OT monitoring platforms.
• Hands-on experience with industrial Ethernet, VPN tunneling, IPsec-based connectivity, and secure remote access.
• Hands-on experience with virtualized OT or controls server environments such as VMware vSAN, Microsoft Azure Stack HCI / Hyper-V, or comparable infrastructure platforms.
• Experience with industrial communication and OT infrastructure protocols, including BACnet/IP, BACnet MSTP, Modbus TCP/RTU, OPC UA, IEC-61850 MMS/GOOSE, MQTT, SNMP, syslog, NTP/PTP, IRIG-B, and vendor-specific interfaces.
• Experience reviewing and producing technical design documentation, commissioning plans, and acceptance test procedures.
• Experience with factory witnessed testing, site acceptance testing, failover testing, telemetry validation, protocol compatibility testing, and root-cause analysis.
• Ability to use logs, packet captures, and field observations to make sound technical decisions and communicate risk clearly.

Preferred Skills

• Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Network Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related discipline.
• Experience leading multi-campus OT network integration, commissioning, and operations across cross-functional teams, contractors, vendors, and delivery partners.
• Relevant networking certifications such as Cisco CCNA/CCNP, Palo Alto PCNSA/PCNSE, Juniper JNCIA/JNCIS, or similar networking credentials.
• Cybersecurity certifications such as CISSP, GICSP, ISA/IEC 62443, CompTIA Security+, or similar cybersecurity credentials.
• Experience with network automation, Git-based configuration management, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using tools such as Ansible, Terraform, Python, or similar to support scalable OT network deployment and lifecycle management.
• Experience with scripting, APIs, and automation workflows that improve OT network operations.
• Experience using AI agents or MCP-connected tools to support telemetry analysis and troubleshooting.
• Experience with relational database systems such as PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MySQL, or similar platforms used for OT telemetry, historian integrations, troubleshooting, and reporting.