Description
Senior Network Engineer - Cisco ASA, Checkpoint, F5, GTM/LTM, LAN/WAN is required by my client who is based in Leeds
Acts as a subject matter expert for the network team, providing technical expertise in order to drive high quality, efficient and secure solutions into clients infrastructure.
Ideal candidates should have experience in core routing and switching skills, security skills in Cisco ASA and Checkpoint, and have working knowledge of F5 GTM/LTM's.
Responsible for a wide range of voice, data, security, resilience, disaster recovery and Firewall support services to internal and external customers.
Key Skills and Qualifications:
- Extensive practical experience supporting, configuring and managing commercial network infrastructure.
- Working at CCNP level with a minimum of a valid Cisco CCNA qualification.
- Excellent Analytical and problem solving skills.
- Knowledge of LAN, WAN
- Experience of Cisco ASA and Checkpoint firewalls
- Experience of advanced routing and switching protocols and IOS upgrades
- Experience of configuring and managing F5 GTM/LTM Load Balancing devices.
- Experience of security best practice including compliance requirements for PCI.
Past Experience Required:
- Extended experience of working in a Cisco environment.
- Good communication skills, written and oral, working with people at all levels and in all areas of the business
- A structured and methodical approach to problem solving
- Ability to motivate self and others
- Solid commercial awareness and an ability to understand how IT relates to a company and impacts its performance, and the ability to use this in decision making.
Key Responsibilities:
- Manage the IT Network, Security and Telecoms Infrastructure across all sites including WAN, LAN and Voice environments. To maintain capacity, availability and performance at levels sufficient to meet business requirements and achieve service level targets.
- Mentors and assists in the development of other team members, as well as 1st/2nd line support in order to spread knowledge across teams to improve service provision across the group.
- Assist the Technical Design Authority team in creating network solutions according to budget and time constraints.
- Assist the Team Leader in defining the strategy, plans and budgets for developing the IT Voice and Data Infrastructure to support business operations with third parties where required.
- Represents the Network team as the subject matter expert and technical authority for solutions design reviews and sign off.
- Actively engages with suppliers and third parties, continually reviewing contracts and SLA commitments to ensure they meet business expectations.
- Through understanding the company wide business objectives, explore and research new technologies in order to create technical solutions which help group businesses develop and reach their goals.
- Contribute to the team service improvement plan by identifying areas of improvement and deliver solutions.
- Steer and maintain the security of the network infrastructure with an awareness of compliance (SOX, J-SOX, PCI-DSS, FCA etc.) and understanding implications of non-compliance.
- Act as team representative at the Change Advisory Board to evaluate and vet changes across multiple technical disciplines.
- Actively build relationships with and liaise with key business stakeholders to understand business challenges.
- Take ownership of incident resolution, by diagnosing complex technical issues and feeding back communications to the incident management team.
- Introduce enhanced monitoring capabilities and practices in order to provide better visibility of the network infrastructure.
- Carry out capacity planning and reporting to review and address system expansion and provide recommendations for future growth.
- Drive and deliver BAU projects through coordination with both inter-team and third party resources.
- Responsible for the purchase, installation and testing of hardware/software, telecommunications equipment and other items as necessary, in accordance with SLAs, procedures and software licensing conditions.
- Carry out device backups, housekeeping, preventative maintenance and other operational tasks in accordance with relevant schedules and procedures.
- Provide appropriate maintenance and support for all equipment and software.
- Create, publish and maintain documentation and procedures in order to support the day to day operation of network infrastructure.
- Identify and instigate best practice, applying industry accepted standards to team practices and solutions.
- Actively investigate and remediate security vulnerabilities, evaluating threats to infrastructure and carrying out patch management where necessary.
- To analyse, evaluate and develop network requirements to ensure compatibility and interdependencies with other network features.
- Provide technical recommendations supported by coherent business cases to recommend best fit' technologies to increase market share.
- Manage network related disaster recovery operations and document in run books.
- Introduce smarter ways of working, working more efficiently. Automating standard repeatable tasks.
- Develop plans for preventative maintenance schedule across the network.
- Act as subject matter expert, delivering projects to exceptional standards, to timelines and within agreed budgets.
- Provide IT Infrastructure support to internal and external customers in accordance with SLAs.
- Maintain measures to prevent unauthorised internal and external access to equipment and systems including user names and passwords and entry controls for computer facilities.
- Using system logs and other reporting tools, to monitor usage and report suspected security breaches and computer mis-use to the Network Team Leader.
- As part of infrastructure team, liaise with colleagues across the Group to provide technical recommendations to improve IT capability in support of business demands
- Undertake any other duties as specified from time to time in accordance with business requirements.
- Provide out of hours support as required and be a member of 3rd line on-call rota.
- Deputise for the Network Team Leader where required.
Mercator IT Solutions provides services as an agency and an employment business