Data Center Engineer

The Data Centre team is responsible for operational excellence across all Claranet UK Data Centres, including installation and support of Claranet and customer equipment, mechanical and electrical facilities management and security. This extremely customer focussed team is split between London and Bristol, providing critical on-site support to customers and the business around the clock.

Our Data Engineers are responsible for the lifecycle of all managed hardware hosted within Claranet UK Data Centres, remote assistance for colocation customers and supporting facility operations to ensure maximum uptime.

Claranet’s strategy is to build long-term, trusted relationships with its customers by delivering market-leading, integrated managed services. Our portfolio platforms, infrastructure and data centres are critical to our strategy and ensuring our customers have access 24*7*365. We are seeking a Data Centre Engineer who will be a key contributor to create stable and reliable platforms and ensure that technologies and services are running optimally and maximising synergy and efficiency across the technology landscape.

The Data Centre Engineer is part of the Data Centre Practice department within the Customer Experience and Managed Service. The key objectives will be to:

• Commit to several dayshifts operating between the hours of 8:00am to 8:00pm Monday to Friday. The dayshifts are rostered on a rotational basis with each engineer working 37.5hrs/week.
• Form part of an on-call Rota, covering escalations outside of the above hours. On-call and overtime are claimed in addition to your base salary, in-line with company policy. Generally, engineers will be expected to cover 1 in every 4 weeks on call.
• Meet and assist Claranet customers and visiting engineers with the installation and support of services, presenting yourself as a professional public face of Claranet at all Data Centre sites.
• Review and maintain site security and access control at all times, working closely with the security team to maintain our existing quality and security certifications which include ISO9001 and ISO27001.

Essential duties and responsibilities:

• Troubleshooting and repair of hardware faults and the installation of spares or components as required.
• You will be based at our Docklands and Hoddesdon Data Centres (must live within 1 hour commute to the data centres- EN11 & E14) with occasional travel to other UK sites when required.
• Provide hands and eyes services to all Claranet departments and external customers.
• Installation and decommission of managed equipment within the Data Centres and external customer sites.
• Performing routine maintenance on server and network equipment to maintain maximum uptime of customer environments.
• Accepting and taking ownership of fault escalations from internal teams.
• Providing internal and external customers with timely updates on progress of incidents.
• Make regular physical checks of the Data Centre facilities and assist with the production of monthly statistics.
• Documentation of Data Centre equipment, service configuration and hardware solutions.
• Carry out physical checks and audits as required by the business and its customers.
• The management and control of Claranet assets.
• Manage and maintain Data Centre security by allowing only authorised personnel access to the Data Centre facilities.
• Update and maintain Claranet databases following all changes to equipment or assets.

Behavioural competencies – organisational and behavioural fit:

• A positive ‘can-do’ attitude.
• Ability to work effectively under pressure whilst maintaining good prioritisation, high standards and risk mitigation.
• You will be expected to communicate with corporate clients via telephone, tickets, email and face-to-face and should therefore possess excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Enthusiastic and highly motivated.
• Ability to work alone, under own initiative considering the safety of themselves and others at all times.
• Ability to dynamically assess and reduce/mitigate risk to service and safety.
• Excellent organisational skills and attention to detail.
• Full UK manual driving license.

Critical competencies – technical fit:

• At least 1-year prior experience working for an Internet/Data Centre service provider, managed services provider or large corporation supporting server hardware.
• Experience installing and troubleshooting server hardware, components and firmware.
• Experience installing and physically troubleshooting firewalls, switches and routers.
• A demonstrable passion for delivering exceptional customer service.
• Demonstrable problem-solving and troubleshooting skills.
• Ability and drive to create and maintain up-to-date documentation.
• Ability to follow complex instructions for unfamiliar tasks.
• Experience working within Data Centres, installing equipment in data racks and an appreciation of how power and cooling operates in such environments.
• Copper and fibre cabling – types, installation, termination.
• Certified Data Centre Technician (CDCT) or equivalent Data Centre qualification.
• Basic Cisco switching and routing experience.
• Basic Linux and Windows experience.
• VMware hypervisor and basic VM management experience.