Network Engineer

To support this growth, we are now looking for a Network Engineer to work within our Hosting Services team to oversee the ongoing delivery, administration and security compliance of the network infrastructure underpinning our hosted services internationally.

Responsibilities

• Provide expert-level support for the network infrastructure that underpins our data center based services.

• Ensure that network service levels are monitored, reviewed and reported on a regular basis, and that the necessary steps are taken to resolve any issues or negative trends that may be identified.

• Ensure that network and related activities are completed within agreed timelines and/or in line with agreed schedules.

• Work with technical architects, project managers and other stakeholders to identify, assess, select and present appropriate network solutions for their needs.

• Build and deploy agreed solutions within specified timelines.

• Develop, implement and test disaster recovery and/or network fail-over plans as required.

• Maintain operational acceptance criteria for network solutions to be supported by the hosting team, and work with the appropriate delivery teams to ensure that these are met before transition into production.

• Ensure that network and associated service components under management are monitored 24x7 for availability, capacity and performance.

• Monitor and report on network capacity across all network elements, and pro-actively identify and address potential issues in a timely manner.

• Ensure that agreed network and access processes are followed and, in particular, that events, incidents and requests are dealt with in a timely manner using the appropriate operational processes and tools.

• Ensure ongoing compliance with network and related security policies

• Ensure that network and related solutions are documented, including network diagrams, “as-built” configurations, IP address data, and support procedures e.g. “how to fail-over a connection”, etc.

• Maintain good relationships with other team members, other teams, customers and suppliers in order to maximize team working and collaboration.

• Continue to look for ways that the service can be improved and, where agreed, lead or assist with the implementation of service improvements. In particular, focus on service automation opportunities in line with the wider hosted services strategy and available tools; continue to optimize performance, efficiency and utilization.

• Provide consultation to customers and stakeholders on in-life customer solutions.

• Provide 24x7 support as part of the wider hosting operations team.

Required experience & qualifications

• Minimum of CCNP with routing and switching or security certification

• Strong knowledge and hands-on experience of configuring, troubleshooting and supporting Cisco and F5 networking equipment in a datacentre environment, specifically Cisco Nexus switches, Cisco ASA firewalls, F5 LTM and DNS load balancers.

• Strong network design and management skills and experience, including setting up firewall rules, dynamic routing, load balancing, intrusion detection and prevention, setting up remote access and site-to-site VPNs.

• Strong practical experience of following ITIL processes in a 24x7 operations environment with tight SLA and security compliance requirements.

• Practical experience with the majority of:

• Cisco Nexus 7000/9000 series, NX-OS, IOS, VDC, VPC, HSRP, STP, NTP, logging, port channels, layer 3 switching

• Cisco ASR (100x), IOS, XE, OSFP, BGP, VRF, NTP, logging

• Cisco ASA, IPS, ASAv, Multi-context, , IPSEC VPN, Anyconnect SSL VPN, NAT, ACLs

• F5 LTM, route domains, partitions, pools, nodes, irules, GTM – DNS Management, GLB

Desirable skills:

• Good client and relationship management ability with excellent oral and written communication and presentation skills

• Able to demonstrate flexibility, motivation as well as excellent problem solving and team working

• Knowledge of service monitoring and alerting (Nagios, Cacti preferred).

• Knowledge of configuration management (Puppet preferred).

• Ability to manage 3rd party vendors e.g. F5, Cisco