Senior Infrastructure Engineer

We’re London’s largest and fastest 100% full fibre broadband provider, bringing better internet to Londoners since 2013. Unlike most providers, we build, own and operate our dedicated fibre optic network and install it directly into the home, meaning we can deliver a super-fast connection at prices the national providers find hard to beat.

We’re a relatively new company to the market, but since establishment:

• We’re the only provider in London offering residential broadband speeds of up to 5Gbps.
• Our network covers 1.3 million properties in London, which is more than one third of homes in the UK’s capital city.
• We have over 800,000 properties under wayleave agreement and are currently working in partnership with more than 200 of London’s biggest landlords.
• We have connected 720 community spaces in 24 boroughs, giving more Londoners free access to fast, reliable broadband.

To help us get to our future, we’re looking for forward thinkers, people with big ideas, people passionate about technology and most importantly hard working team players to join us and be a part of our growing business.

Job purpose: The Senior Infrastructure Engineer is responsible for developing, maintaining, improving, and supporting Community Fibre’s infrastructure service environments which support our customer-facing network. This includes both cloud (AWS) and on-premise servers, storage, applications, databases, containers, and as-a-service offerings. Manage and maintain existing Linux based servers, both on-prem and cloud hosted, including management of security patches, distribution upgrades and configuration management, systems/codebases, installation/configuration/operation of the applications running on the servers. You will work with the Network Technology Team and be responsible for building new servers/systems as well as ensuring that all our existing ones are maintained, reliable and resilient. The role covers backend systems engineering, infrastructure, and site reliability engineering within the Network Technology group. You should be hungry for hands-on experience, have a desire to think outside of the box and have strong understanding in Systems/Infrastructure as well as having significant exposure to automation and orchestration from a systems perspective. Provide guidance and mentoring to other engineers, supporting the design, implementation and troubleshooting when required. Create and implement high and low-level designs in alignment with architecture principles and standards. Act as a senior member for the Network Technology team, providing an escalation point and acting as a mentor to other engineers in the team.

What you’ll be doing: You will be responsible for low-level design and implementation of solutions to time, cost and quality, following industry best practices. Create, improve, and maintain automation scripts to increase system maintenance efficiency and reduce repetitive manual tasks. You will have a service-first approach with a systems thinking aptitude. The skill to take a new technology, research it, test it in the lab and deploy it live. Provide guidance and mentoring to other engineers, supporting the design, implementation and troubleshooting when required.

• Advanced Scripting and Automation: Develop scripts in Python, Bash, and Perl to automate system administration tasks, infrastructure deployment, and network security enhancements.
• Infrastructure Management: Oversee the planning, deployment, and maintenance of network infrastructure using tools such as Terraform and Puppet.
• Configuration Management: Utilise Puppet to manage configurations consistently across different environments, ensuring efficiency and compliance.
• CI/CD Pipeline Development: Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines to facilitate automated deployment and integration processes.
• Security Implementations: Configure and manage complex security solutions using tools such as Freeradius, Palo Alto Networks devices, FreeIPA, iptables, and firewalled.
• OS Deployment Automation: Automate operating system installations and configurations for various Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, CentOS, AlmaLinux, and RHEL.
• Microservices Architecture: Design and deploy infrastructure based on microservices architecture to improve scalability and service isolation.
• Security Strategy Implementation: Develop and enforce robust security protocols, applying various security methods including encryption, authentication, and intrusion detection systems.
• Comprehensive Testing: Lead diverse types of testing to ensure system integrity and security, including uni, integration, performance, security, and end-to-end testing.
• Storage Management: Responsible for managing diverse storage environments ranging from physical storage solutions to advanced cloud storage systems, including a deep understanding of different types of block storage technologies.
• Product evaluation based on cost, efficiency, fitness for purpose. Maintaining knowledge of current and future information security threats and challenges.
• In-depth troubleshooting, troubleshoot issues efficiently while effectively communicating escalations and outcomes.
• Lead significant projects including design, development, integration and deployment.
• Deliver end-to-end data ingestion and processing using OpenSearch/Elastic Stack.

The experience we’re looking for you to bring: The Engineer should have a minimum of 5 years of experience working in a server and storage environment.

• Must have:
• ISP/MSP Experience
• Advanced understanding of Linux (Ubuntu / Debian, and CentOS / RHEL).
• Experience with infrastructure as code (IAC) practices.
• Configuration management: Puppet and Ansible
• Orchestration: Terraform
• DCIM/IPAM tools, e.g. NetBox
• Log ingestion: OpenSearch/Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana, Filebeat, Syslog
• Containerisation: Docker and/or Kubernetes
• Virtualisation experience
• Cloud: AWS
• Databases: PostgreSQL and/or MySQL
• Application Servers: Apache or nginx, WSGI
• Deep understanding of key service health metrics
• Knowledge of current security best practices including encryption and systems hardening
• Experience implementing technologies with a focus on operability, reliability, and scalability.
• Network aptitude.
• The skill to take a new technology, research it, test it in the lab and deploy it live.
• Excellent understanding of telecommunications industry practices, standards, and regulatory requirements.
• Solid understanding of core ITIL processes.
• Hands-on experience with automation and orchestration tools such as Ansible, Terraform and Puppet.
• Experience using version control systems, e.g. Git.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to engage with stakeholders at various levels.
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Keen to learn new technologies.

Nice to have:

• Familiarity with SIEM, detect security threats and event correlation is a plus.
• Experience with data replication, backup, and recovery strategies.
• Next generation firewall experience
• Scripting Languages – Eg Bash and Python

Tech stack:

• DNS
• Dell PowerEdge and PowerVault, HPE ProLiant, Supermicro
• Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, Logstash, Filebeat, Opensearch
• NetBox
• Ansible
• Virtualisation
• AWS
• Puppet
• Terraform
• Linux Operating Systems
• Databases – Eg NoSQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL

Why join us:

• You get to work with some of the best technology in the market
• Be part of an exciting scale up business where you can bring your ideas, bring your knowledge, we value your contribution
• We all love time off whether that’s going on an exotic holiday or a staycation, you’ll get 25 days holiday to enjoy, increasing by 1 day for each year of service up to 28 days
• Birthday leave, our treat to you
• Keen cyclist, join our cycle to work scheme
• Flexible WFH policy
• Enjoy the perks of Private Health Cover
• You get to work with an amazing bunch of people

We are an Armed Forces friendly organisation. We are an equal opportunities employer that values diversity in our team, we welcome applications from all backgrounds.