Senior Network Engineer
Salary: Up to £65,000 DOE + On-Call Allowance & Paid Callouts
Location: Essex – Hybrid
Employment: Full Time, Permanent
This is an opportunity to join a well-established UK technology services business operating across managed networks, ISP services and datacentre infrastructure.
Supporting a diverse customer base that includes enterprise and critical national infrastructure environments, the business designs, delivers and manages complex, highly available network solutions across the UK.
We’re looking for a Senior Network Engineer with strong service-provider networking experience who is confident working across routing, switching, firewalls and datacentre infrastructure.
This is a genuinely hands-on senior engineering position.
You’ll work across both internal ISP/datacentre infrastructure and complex customer environments, taking ownership of network projects from initial design and implementation through to migration, troubleshooting and ongoing support.
At the heart of the environment are Cisco Nexus, Cisco ASR, Fortinet and BGP, so you’ll need to be technically strong across these technologies rather than simply having supported them at a high level.
The Role
Working within an established Network Operations function, you’ll act as a senior technical point of escalation whilst helping develop and maintain both service-provider infrastructure and managed customer networks.
You’ll take ownership of installation and migration projects, configure and troubleshoot complex network environments and work directly with customers to resolve technical issues.
The position also participates in a 24x7 on-call rota, supporting high-availability customer environments alongside the organisation’s own ISP and datacentre platform. A separate on-call allowance and paid callout payments are provided in addition to the base salary.
Key Responsibilities
- Own network installation and migration projects from planning through to delivery.
- Maintain and develop ISP and datacentre network infrastructure.
- Manage core routing, peering, transit and edge connectivity.
- Design, configure and troubleshoot BGP, including peering and route policies.
- Configure and support Cisco Nexus datacentre switching environments.
- Configure and support Cisco ASR service-provider and edge routing.
- Manage multi-customer firewall environments using FortiGate and FortiManager.
- Configure zone-based firewalling, NAT, IPS, web filtering and AV policies.
- Configure and troubleshoot IPSec site-to-site and SSL VPN connectivity.
- Support resilient Layer 2 and Layer 3 network environments.
- Maintain and develop network monitoring and alerting.
- Work directly with customers during implementations, migrations and technical incidents.
- Participate in the 24x7 engineering on-call rota.
What We’re Looking For
You’ll probably be a great fit if you’ve:
- Worked at senior Network Engineer level within an MSP, ISP or service-provider environment.
- Strong production experience with BGP, including design, peering, route policy and troubleshooting.
- Strong Cisco routing and switching experience.
- Hands-on experience with Cisco Nexus / NX-OS, including datacentre networking and vPC.
- Hands-on experience with Cisco ASR / IOS-XE in edge or service-provider environments.
- Strong Layer 2/3 networking fundamentals including VLANs, trunking, STP, EIGRP and HA/redundancy.
- Strong Fortinet experience across FortiGate and FortiManager.
- Managed firewall environments at scale across multiple customers or sites.
- Experience with NAT, IPS, filtering policies, IPSec and SSL VPNs.
- Worked within datacentre environments covering resilient core networking, copper and fibre connectivity.
- Good understanding of internet connectivity including FTTC, FTTP and leased lines.
- Strong troubleshooting skills and the ability to remain methodical during complex incidents.
- Confidence communicating directly with technical and non-technical customers.
- A full UK driving licence.
Highly Desirable
- Cisco CCNP or equivalent certification.
- Fortinet NSE / FCP certification.
- HPE Aruba, Cisco Meraki or Ubiquiti UniFi experience.
- Sophos, Cisco ASA or Firepower firewall experience.
- Windows Server knowledge.
- VMware or Hyper-V exposure.
- Experience supporting Critical National Infrastructure, datacentre or other highly available/regulated environments.
This Role Probably Isn’t For You If…
- Your networking experience is predominantly internal corporate IT rather than MSP, ISP or service-provider environments.
- You don’t have strong hands-on BGP experience.
- Your Cisco experience doesn’t include technologies such as Nexus or ASR.
- You haven’t worked hands-on with Fortinet / FortiManager.
- You’re looking to move away from hands-on engineering into a purely managerial position.
- You’re unable to participate in an out-of-hours on-call rota.
- You’re looking for a fully remote position with no customer or datacentre travel.
Why Join?
- Salary of up to £65,000 DOE.
- Separate on-call allowance in addition to base salary.
- Additional paid callout payments.
- Hybrid working with occasional home working.
- Work across genuine ISP and datacentre infrastructure.
- Exposure to complex enterprise and critical infrastructure environments.
- Hands-on work across Cisco, Fortinet, BGP and multi-vendor networking.
- Take ownership of technically challenging network installations and migrations.
- Join an experienced engineering team where you can remain deeply technical.
To Be Considered
Please either apply by clicking online or emailing [email protected].
By applying for this role, you give express consent for us to process and submit (subject to suitability) your application to our client in conjunction with this vacancy only.
Key Skills: Senior Network Engineer, Network Engineer, ISP, MSP, Service Provider, BGP, Cisco, Cisco Nexus, NX-OS, Cisco ASR, IOS-XE, Fortinet, FortiGate, FortiManager, Firewall, Routing, Switching, VLAN, STP, EIGRP, vPC, IPSec, SSL VPN, Datacentre, Peering, Transit, CCNP, Network Operations.