OT Network Engineer

NO THIRD PARTIES, MUST BE LOCAL TO HOUSTON AREA, NO SPONSORSHIP Alava Consulting is seeking an experienced Senior OT/IT Network & Cybersecurity Engineer for a direct-hire opportunity with one of our clients in La Porte, Texas . This position will be responsible for designing, implementing, securing, and supporting OT/IT infrastructure connecting remote industrial sites with a centralized Monitoring & Diagnostics (M&D) center. The role requires strong hands-on industrial networking experience combined with OT cybersecurity, NERC CIP, and industrial control system expertise. Key Responsibilities Own end-to-end secure data connectivity between remote industrial sites and the centralized M&D center. Design and support reliable, secure, low-latency data flows between industrial sites and centralized monitoring infrastructure. Configure and maintain industrial network infrastructure, including routers, firewalls, secure gateways, servers, and edge devices. Configure and troubleshoot IPsec VPN tunnels, including IKEv2, NAT traversal, QoS, and fragmentation. Implement segmented OT network architectures across Control System, DMZ, and Enterprise environments. Establish secure connectivity with DCS, control systems, vibration monitoring, emissions systems, and other industrial monitoring platforms. Stand up, harden, and support centralized M&D infrastructure, including servers, virtualization platforms, firewalls, historians, analytics engines, and visualization tools. Ensure OT network architecture complies with NERC CIP requirements for segmentation, access controls, monitoring, and incident response. Troubleshoot network connectivity, data integrity, latency, and system availability issues across domestic and international sites. Serve as a technical advisor for OT connectivity, cybersecurity, and data architecture decisions. Collaborate with engineering, reliability, and analytics teams to support monitoring and diagnostic initiatives. Qualifications Demonstrated experience supporting industrial OT/IT systems within power generation, manufacturing, oil & gas, petrochemical, data centers, or other critical infrastructure environments. Strong hands-on industrial networking experience, including IP addressing, routing, VLANs, network segmentation, and traffic management. Experience designing and supporting secure OT architectures aligned with NERC CIP or equivalent cybersecurity standards. Strong experience with firewalls, secure gateways, IPsec VPNs, and encrypted site-to-site communications. Working knowledge of industrial communication protocols such as OPC UA, Modbus TCP, DNP3, or similar industrial protocols. Experience securely transferring operational data from protected OT environments. Experience supporting industrial data historians, time-series platforms, analytics systems, and SCADA/HMI supervisory software. Experience working with industrial process and equipment data. Hands-on experience installing, configuring, and commissioning OT hardware such as routers, firewalls, servers, and edge gateways. Familiarity with the NERC CIP compliance lifecycle, including asset identification, risk assessment, controls, and audit evidence preparation. Ability to work independently in complex, high-stakes industrial environments with minimal supervision. Power generation or gas turbine experience is a plus but not req #J-18808-Ljbffr