Network Services Leader – Strategy, Delivery & Governance in Birmingham

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and manage the network team, ensuring clarity of roles within the operating model.
• Provide coaching, direction and subject matter leadership to team members, fostering a high-performance culture focused on service excellence, reliability, and continual improvement.
• Act as the service owner for network services, ensuring stable, secure, and resilient end-to-end service delivery across WAN/SD-WAN, LAN/WLAN, Firewalls, Remote Access and Public DNS.
• Provide governance and oversight of operational activities performed by internal teams and managed service providers, ensuring compliance with SLAs, KPIs, and operational standards.
• Ensure effective incident, problem, change and lifecycle management processes are followed in line with ITIL frameworks.
• Drive the development, execution, and continuous refinement of the network strategy and roadmap, including Zero Trust, network simplification, cloud networking and secure access initiatives.
• Lead network related transformation and continuous improvement programmes, ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture, cyber security and wider IT strategy.
• Own day-to-day and strategic relationships with key vendors and managed service providers, ensuring effective performance management, service governance and contract alignment.
• Lead governance forums, including monthly service reviews, operational performance reporting, issue escalations and risk management.
• Ensure suppliers adhere to compliance and security standards and deliver consistent, high-quality service.
• Ensure network services and operations meet internal and external regulatory standards.
• Maintain oversight of network asset and configuration management processes, ensuring accuracy and audit readiness.
• Engage and collaborate with IT Leadership, Architecture, Workplace, Data Centre & Cloud and Shared Services to ensure network services are integrated, scalable and support business needs.
• Act as a trusted advisor to divisional and operating company teams on network related activities, ensuring alignment with strategic direction and architectural standards.
• Communicate network service health, risks, constraints and opportunities to stakeholders in clear and business relevant terms.
• Provide leadership and oversight for network related initiatives and projects, ensuring appropriate planning, governance, resourcing and vendor coordination.
• Support the delivery of transformation activities such as Zero Trust pilots, Network Asset Management, large scale refresh cycles and architectural transitions.

Qualifications

• Drive Results – consistently achieving objectives, even under tough circumstances.
• Have Courage – stepping up to address difficult issues.
• Cultivate Innovation – creating new and better ways for the organisation to be successful.
• Have a Strategic Mindset – seeing ahead to future possibilities and translating them into breakthrough strategies.
• Attract and Develop Talent – attracting, selecting and developing talent to meet the organisation's goals and needs.
• Be Resilient – rebounding from setbacks and adversity when facing difficult situations.
• Collaborate – building partnerships and working collaboratively with others to meet shared objectives.
• Make Quality Decisions – making good and timely decisions that keep the organisation moving forward.
• Drive Vision and Purpose – painting a compelling picture of the vision and strategy that motivates others to action.
• Leader – strong leadership and interpersonal skills to manage and mentor a team.
• Visionary Moderniser – able to think outside the situation on the ground and drive towards best‑in‑class modern technology and practice.
• Critical thinker – a problem solver who resolves conflicts.
• Customer Focused – looks for ways to innovate to improve the focus on the customer.
• Motivated – stays motivated and can deal with resistance.
• Coaches others – builds on strengths and improves on weaknesses.
• Detail oriented – drills into detail and takes corrective action early and decisively.
• Proven project management skills – able to work well under pressure and meet deadlines.
• In‑depth knowledge of networking concepts, tools, infrastructure and capabilities.
• Experienced with multiple networking software products, platforms and vendors.
• Strong vendor management skills – experienced managing third‑party relationships.
• Strong professional accreditations / certifications such as ITIL, CISCO, Azure, CompTIA+ etc.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with people at all levels across the organisation.
• Excellent organisational and time‑management skills, with the ability to handle multiple priorities.
• Effective negotiation skills – able to facilitate collaboration with internal stakeholders, vendors and MSPs.
• The ability to translate business requirements into viable technical solutions.
• Strong stakeholder management skills – all directions.
• The ability to communicate complex concepts to technical and non‑technical audiences.
• College diploma or university degree in business, information systems or technical related subject.
• Minimum of 5 years hands‑on, technical experience as part of a network operations team and wider infrastructure/IT team.
• Minimum of 5 years management experience as part of a network operations team or wider infrastructure/IT team.
• Experience working in the construction materials/industrial manufacturing sector.
• Proven experience of working in a federated matrix model.

CRH is an equal opportunity employer.