Network and Cyber Security Engineer for the Division of HPD Tech

Job Description

About the Agency:

The New York City Department of Housing Preservation Development (HPD) promotes quality and affordability in the city's housing, and diversity and strength in the city’s neighborhoods because every New Yorker deserves a safe, affordable place to live in a neighborhood they love.


- We maintain building and resident safety and health
- We create opportunities for New Yorkers through housing affordability
- We engage New Yorkers to build and sustain neighborhood strength and diversity.

HPD is entrusted with fulfilling these objectives through the goals and strategies of “Housing Our Neighbors: A Blueprint for Housing and Homelessness,” Mayor Adams’ comprehensive housing framework. To support this important work, the administration has committed $5 billion in new capital funding, bringing the 10-year planned investment in housing to $22 billion the largest in the city’s history. This investment, coupled with a commitment to reduce administrative and regulatory barriers, is a multi-pronged strategy to tackle New York City’s complex housing crisis, by addressing homelessness and housing instability, promoting economic stability and mobility, increasing homeownership opportunities, improving health and safety, and increasing opportunities for equitable growth.
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Your Team:

Housing Preservation & Development Technology (HPD Tech) is the IT division within HPD. The Office of HPD Tech leads the agency’s effort to transform HPD through technology by promoting productivity and eliminating manual processing, shrinking costs, and increasing the pace of work. HPD Tech works to improve effectiveness of business processes using core applications for flawless execution. HPD Tech empowers decision makers with access to quality (complete and accurate) information to anticipate and pro-actively react to building, neighborhood and market conditions.

The Office of HPDTech is composed of 7 units: CIO (Chief Information Office), CTO (Chief Technology Office), CPO (Chief Product Office), Budget, Enterprise Architecture, Planning & Compliance, and Information Security.

Your Impact:

As a Network and Cyber Security Engineer for the Division of HPD Tech, you will be under supervision, with latitude for independent action and judgment, in the management and administration of complex and secure Local Area Networks (LANs), and Wide Area Networks (WANs), responsible for planning, designing, configuring, installing, implementing, testing, troubleshooting, integrating, performance monitoring, maintaining, enhancing, security management, documenting, and support of network devices such as routers, switches, firewalls, and wireless controllers and access points, their operating systems and security updates, voice over internet protocol (VOIP). The Network and Cyber Security Engineer will liaise with vendors for technical support; may supervise a small unit engaged in work described herein; may serve as a project leader of small network projects or may independently perform LAN and WAN work of a highly technical nature. This position will perform related work.

Special Working Conditions: This position may be required to work various shifts including nights, Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays. (This is a brief description of what you might do in this position and does not include all the duties of this position.)

This position may supervise unit supervisors, project leaders and their subordinates, instructing, directing and checking their work. In the temporary absence of the supervisor, may perform the duties of that position.

Your Role:

A Network and Cyber Security Engineer is responsible for managing and maintaining the Agency’s network infrastructure, ensuring seamless connectivity, security, and performance. Their role primarily revolves around, but not limited to, Local Area Networks (LANs) and Wide Area Networks (WANs), which are crucial for communication and data exchange within and between offices. As the Network and Cyber Security Engineer, your role will be maintaining network services and service levels. Services assure visibility and access control, inter-agency/web interoperability, automatic bandwidth throttling, alerting/logging on bandwidth and processing faults. Service levels are 99.99999% available. Additional roles include:
- Recommend, test and integrate networking solutions to meet the Agency’s business connectivity needs;
- Partner with the New York City Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI) to assure standards compliance and coordinate interagency network projects;
- Maintain all routing and switching hardware, firmware and configurations. Perform installation and configuration of Cisco switches and routers, ensuring that the software is current, and security patches are applied as needed. Maintain monthly configuration backups, inventories, diagrams and interconnect tables, and document operational, recovery and upgrade procedures and project plans;
- Manage the Palo Alto firewall, ACLs/conduits, and other intrusion prevention/detection solutions to prevent against, or mitigate, DoS/DDoS and other host/network attacks. The candidate will also be responsible for maintaining and improving comprehensive management, analysis, and performance monitoring solutions currently implemented such as SolarWinds, ThousandEyes, Riverbed, and Rapid 7 technologies;

Your Responsibilities:

- Configure, install, upgrade, and ongoing administration of firewalls, routers, switches, wireless access points and other network devices. Perform regular system updates and patches.
- Monitor for network performance, latency, outages and trends using tools like SolarWinds Orion, Wireshark, Riverbed, ThousandEyes, and Cisco ISE
- Manage and monitor for security issues by implementing firewalls and access controls to protect against cyber threats and respond accordingly to incidents. Enforce network policies and compliance with security regulations.
- Manage and troubleshoot communication circuits, including monitoring performance and ordering new and decommissioning circuits.
- Fiber optic and ethernet cable management within the data center and hub rooms throughout the agency.
- Troubleshoot and resolve connectivity issues, ensuring minimal downtime.
- Provide technical support for end-users and coordinate with IT staff on infrastructure initiatives.
- Maintain detailed network documentation, change logs and diagrams.
- Plan and implement network expansions or upgrades as needed.
- Provide leadership with status reports and recommend network improvements.

Preferred skills

- Deep understanding of LAN (Local Area Network) & WAN (Wide Area Network) concepts.
- Knowledge of TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, VLANs, and subnetting.
- Experience with routing protocols like EIGRP, and BGP.
- Expertise in configuring and managing routers, switches, firewalls, and access points.
- Experience with networking equipment from vendors like Cisco, Juniper, HP, or Palo Alto.
- Ability to work with fiber optics, Ethernet cables, and wireless networks.
- Knowledge of firewall policies, VPNs (IPSec, SSL VPN), and intrusion prevention systems (IPS).
- Experience in network security best practices and access control mechanisms.
- Familiarity with antivirus, malware protection, and endpoint security tools.
- Proficiency with monitoring tools like Wireshark, Riverbed, SolarWinds, and Rapid 7.
- Ability to troubleshoot network failures, slow performance, and connectivity issues.
- Experience with log analysis and root cause identification.
- Ability to explain technical issues to non-technical users.
- Creating and maintaining network diagrams, incident reports, and documentation.

Certifications (Preferred but Not Always Required)
- CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) – Essential for network fundamentals.
- CompTIA Network+ – Covers basic networking concepts.
- CCNP (Cisco Certified Network Professional) – For advanced networking.
- Fortinet NSE, Palo Alto PCNSA, or Juniper JNCIA – For firewall and security expertise.

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NOTE: Only those candidates under consideration will be contacted. This position is open to applicants who filed for an exam or those who are already permanent in the Certified IT Administrator (LAN/WAN).

Please indicate in your cover letter whether you have filed for an exam or are already permanent in the Certified IT Administrator (LAN/WAN). Applicants who filed for an exam will be required to produce a copy of their Order Confirmation Receipt at time of interview for verification.

This position may be eligible for remote work up to 2 days per week, pursuant to the Remote Work Pilot Program agreed to between the City and various unions.

CERTIFIED IT ADMINISTRATOR (LA - 13652

Qualifications

Professional/vendor certification(s) in local area network administration that is required for the position to be filled. In addition, all candidates must have the following:

1. A baccalaureate degree from an accredited college, and two years of satisfactory full-time (not classroom based) experience in local area network and/or wide area network planning, design, configuration, installation, implementation, troubleshooting, integration, performance monitoring, maintenance, enhancement, and security management; or

2. A four-year high school diploma or its educational equivalent and six years of satisfactory full-time (not classroom based) information technology experience of which at least 2 years must have been as described in "1" or

3. A satisfactory equivalent of education and/or experience equivalent to "1" or "2" above. Education may be substituted for experience on the basis that 30 undergraduate semester credits from an accredited college is equivalent to 6 months of experience. A master’s degree in computer science or a related field from an accredited college may be substitute for one year of experience. However, all candidates must have at least one year of satisfactory (not classroom based) full-time information technology experience as described in "1" above.


Note: In addition to meeting the minimum Qualification Requirements: Incumbents may be required to update existing and/or obtain additional professional industry-standard certification(s) for current and future technical environments(s) in which they may be assigned to work, as determined by the employing agency.

Additional Information

The City of New York is an inclusive equal opportunity employer committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce and providing a work environment that is free from discrimination and harassment based upon any legally protected status or protected characteristic, including but not limited to an individual's sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation, veteran status, gender identity, or pregnancy.