Network Specialist

As a UW employee, you have a unique opportunity to change lives on our campuses, in our state and around the world. UW employees offer their boundless energy, creative problem-solving skills, and dedication to building stronger minds and a healthier world. UW is Committed to attracting and retaining a diverse staff, your experiences, perspectives, and unique identities will be honored at the University of Washington. Together, our community strives to create and maintain working and learning environments that are inclusive, equitable, and welcoming.
UW-IT is the central IT organization for the University of Washington, providing critical technology support to all three campuses, UW medical centers, and global research operations. UW-IT collaborates with University partners to advance teaching, learning, innovation, and discovery at the UW.
UW-IT Customer Experience (CX) is a full-service organization providing 24x7x365 support utilizing the ITIL service management framework to assist UW faculty, staff, and students. We are the liaisons between UW-IT the University and partners, representing UW-IT and advocating on behalf of our customers. CX operates the Service Center assisting the UW community; monitors and troubleshoots University networks, systems and applications; and collaborates with UW partners to develop strategic customer solutions.
The Network Specialist in CX is responsible for providing frontline in-depth troubleshooting and advanced technical support for UW-IT’s state-of-the-art data and telecommunications network environments, including monitoring, repairing, and reporting on UW-IT network infrastructure including all three UW campuses (Seattle, Bothell, and Tacoma), UW Medicine (hospitals and clinics), the state K-20 Education Network (300+ school districts), the Pacific Northwest Gigapop (research & education networks throughout the PNW and Pacific Rim), UW mission-critical administrative, academic, research computing systems, datacenters, services and applications using a variety of IT disciplines, technologies and toolsets.
The Network Specialist partners with other UW-IT service teams in the development, design, and delivery of services.
Position Complexities:
UW-IT is a dynamic and complex environment serving a customer base of over 100,000 people, spanning diverse cultures, work environments, and geographical locations. The successful candidate will need to be a self-motivated, organized person who can work with limited supervision and as part of a team.
The Network Specialist is part of a 24x7x365 operations team providing analysis and evaluation of complex issues related to the operation of both a carrier-scale heterogeneous network spanning countries, states, counties, cities, campuses, and university non-network infrastructure services including administrative, academic and research computing systems. The Network Specialist is expected to be exemplary in providing professional customer service both verbally and through non-verbal communications methods. This support includes:

Monitoring, reporting, in-depth troubleshooting, repairing, and resolving service incidents, and customer requests related to network and non-network infrastructure services.

Detecting, isolating, and troubleshooting failures and degraded network performance in adherence with customer service level agreements.

Provides courteous and professional real-time assistance to customers and vendors.

Contacting service providers and customers directly to troubleshoot and resolve network and non-network issues.

Record and track scheduled maintenance, outages, service degradations, and general inquiries with customers and/or vendors.

Provide support for domain management, DNS, DHCP and database updates as needed.

Support network and non-network upgrades and transaction activities.

Develop and update troubleshooting procedures and guidelines for use by other departmental staff.
This position requires knowledge of the OSI 7-layer model and experience with the following network technologies and protocols:

Layer1: Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Optical transports such as DWDM.

Layer2: Ethernet, Wi-Fi, VLANS, LACP.

Layer3: IPv4, IPv6, OSPF, BGP, MPLS, Multicast.

Other: SNMP, VOIP, DHCP, DNS, Routing, and number registries.
Positions at this level exercise full use and application of standard principles, theories, and concepts related to networking and provide solutions to a variety of moderately complex problems. They execute established corrective actions necessary for the continued operation of the network and non-network infrastructures managed by UW-IT, and to escalate to more senior staff or support groups as necessary.
They must be capable of communicating complex technical concepts in a clear manner to other technical staff and non-technical customers. They must be fully competent with trouble ticket applications, network monitoring systems, troubleshooting techniques, and tools.
Decisions made by the Network Specialist have a significant impact on monitoring, troubleshooting, reporting and availability of network and non-network infrastructure services.
The Network Specialist interacts with local, regional, and national service providers to facilitate incident management, request fulfillment, and problem resolutions. The Network Specialist ensures high quality by proactively contributing recommendations for improvement regarding documentation and processes for various services and tools and contributing toward those improvements which are prioritized by service managers.
REQUIREMENTS:

Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, or a related field or experience.

Minimum of two years’ experience with network troubleshooting and incident management in a large and complex network or operations environment.

Demonstrated experience using network management tools (e.g., Solarwinds Orion NPM/NCM) and ticketing systems (e.g., ServiceNow)

Demonstrated excellent written and oral communication skills for technical and non-technical customers, technical documentation skills, user liaison skills, and personal interaction abilities.

Experience and understanding of handling confidential material.

Ability to work with minimal supervision, both independently and as part of a team in a fast-paced environment.

Ability to manage varied workload under pressure and time constraints, including escalation when appropriate.

Demonstrated excellent customer service skills driven by a desire to empower customer success and strong problem ownership orientation.
DESIRED:

Strong customer service skills with experience working in a service-oriented organization.

Ability to work independently or in a collaborative team environment.

Ability to quickly troubleshoot problems that may arise in work products.

Analytical and problem-solving skills.

Ability to partner with network engineers to identify the course of resolutions.

Experience in a research university or large enterprise.

ITIL Foundations training.

CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT
The person in this position will be working in a 24x7x365 operational environment and must be willing to work weekends, holidays, and non-standard work hours as scheduled.

Daily interactions with customers, team members, subject matter experts and stakeholders at all levels of the organization focused on problem-solving.

The general working hours for this position will be Sunday - Wednesday 6:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

The Network Specialist will, on occasion, need to adjust hours to accommodate the business needs, deadlines, or respond to emergency situations, and may on occasion work a different schedule on an ad-hoc or semi-permanent basis.

This position is eligible for a Hybrid work telework requiring an annual review/approval process. The expectation is to work one or two days onsite each week.

Required to be part of an on-call rotation and to respond in a timely and appropriate fashion when contacted.

This is an essential remote position and is required to report to work remotely when UW suspends operations.
Application Process:The application process may include completion of a variety of online assessments to obtain additional information that will be used in the evaluation process.These assessments may include Work Authorization, Cover Letter and/or others. Any assessments that you need to complete will appear on your screen as soon as you select “Apply to this position”. Once you begin an assessment, it must be completed at that time; if you do not complete the assessment, you will be prompted to do so the next time you access your “My Jobs” page. If you select to take it later, it will appear on your "My Jobs" page to take when you are ready. Please note that your application will not be reviewed, and you will not be considered for this position until all required assessments have been completed.