Network and Cybersecurity Architect

Network and Cybersecurity Architect

Employment Type: Long-term Contract

Location Details: Albany, NY (5 days per week onsite)

Rate: $80-88/Hr C2C - Only Local and USC/GC - USC preferred.

Key Responsibilities

Network Design and Planning

• Develop and document network architectures that support the current and future needs of Regional TMCs, the STICC, and associated ITS, OT, and business environments.
• Evaluate, recommend, and configure network technologies and solutions, including WAN routing protocols such as OSPF and BGP, segmentation strategies, and resilient communications designs.
• Plan and support execution of consolidation and modernization initiatives to improve performance, maintainability, and operational efficiency.
• Define current state and future state network and cybersecurity architectures, standards, and roadmaps.
• Create and maintain architecture diagrams, data flow diagrams, and supporting technical documentation.

Security Architecture and Cybersecurity Engineering

• Work closely with the NYSDOT CISO to develop and implement comprehensive network and cybersecurity strategies.
• Recommend and deploy security designs that protect critical ITS and OT assets from cyber threats while preserving operational availability and safety.
• Lead or support vulnerability assessments of external IP addresses, internal network segments, and security architecture exposures, and develop remediation plans.
• Integrate threat intelligence feeds from MS-ISAC, NYSOC, and other approved sources into architectural and operational security processes.
• Design and configure recommendations for firewalls, VPNs, network segmentation, zero trust approaches, and secure remote access to sensitive environments.
• Support engineering and design decisions related to endpoint detection and response (EDR) platforms, ensuring endpoint telemetry and response capabilities are appropriately integrated with network and security operations.
• Support SIEM integration and design by helping ensure logs from network devices, firewalls, VPN concentrators, NAC systems, and security appliances are properly captured, normalized, and usable for monitoring and response.
• Contribute to the design and improvement of identity and access management (IAM) controls for administrative access, remote access, privileged access, and service authentication.
• Provide design guidance and configuration for network access control (NAC) solutions to improve device visibility, policy enforcement, and segmentation.
• Support secure design and placement of IDS/IPS, DNS security controls, secure management plane access, and monitoring infrastructure.

Technology Evaluation and Implementation

• Research and evaluate emerging networking and cybersecurity technologies and assess their applicability to the ITS and OT environment.
• Develop proof-of-concept initiatives and pilot programs to validate new technologies and approaches before broader deployment.
• Provide technical leadership and architectural guidance to network engineers and other technical staff.
• Evaluate vendor solutions for security, operational fit, lifecycle support, and interoperability with existing infrastructure.

Network Optimization and Performance Management

• Analyze network performance, utilization, and operational data to identify opportunities for optimization.
• Develop strategies to improve network reliability, scalability, resilience, and security.
• Support capacity planning, lifecycle planning, redundancy design, and performance tuning.
• Recommend improvements to routing, switching, segmentation, path diversity, and failover design.
• Help ensure that monitoring, alerting, and observability capabilities are aligned with operational and security needs.