Senior Network Engineer in Cheshire

We are already engaged with the client on an existing project and are continuing to support them throughout their current delivery journey. As part of this engagement, we are looking to onboard a Senior Network Engineer who can seamlessly integrate into the project, conduct detailed network assessment and discovery activities, identify technical risks, validate the existing infrastructure, and support the successful delivery of the customer's network transformation objectives.

Location: Onsite at customer site in Cheshire

Engagement Type: Contract / project-based assignment

Expected Duration: Approximately 3 months, subject to confirmed scope, start date, project plan and customer priorities

Role Summary: The Senior Network Engineer will support onsite network assessment, discovery, technical validation and delivery activity within a customer environment. The role requires a senior engineer with strong hands-on network infrastructure experience and the ability to work independently in a complex operational environment. The engineer will support activities including network discovery, device audit, site survey, network documentation, technical validation, security assessment inputs, connectivity checks, tooling support and technical coordination with customer and partner teams. The role requires a candidate with approximately 7-10 years industry experience, ideally with exposure to utilities, energy, industrial, manufacturing or other operationally sensitive environments.

Key Responsibilities:

• Support onsite network discovery and infrastructure assessment activities.
• Review, audit and document network devices, connectivity, cabling and logical topology.
• Assist with network kit identification, labelling and validation.
• Capture current-state network information including switches, routers, firewalls, uplinks, VLANs, routing, interfaces and dependencies.
• Support the production of AS-IS network documentation and technical findings.
• Assist with network security assessment activities, including evidence gathering and technical validation.
• Work with customer and partner teams to validate access, device information, management interfaces and monitoring requirements.
• Support deployment or validation of monitoring inputs where required, such as SNMP, syslog, NetFlow/IPFIX or similar tooling.
• Identify technical risks, configuration gaps, undocumented dependencies and potential operational constraints.
• Provide technical input into migration planning, office move readiness or infrastructure change activity.
• Support testing, troubleshooting and issue resolution during project activities.
• Escalate risks, blockers and technical concerns clearly and promptly.

Required Experience:

• Approximately 7-10 years experience in network engineering or similar infrastructure roles.
• Strong hands-on experience with enterprise networking environments.
• Good understanding of switching, routing, VLANs, firewall connectivity, WAN/LAN, network segmentation and network troubleshooting.
• Experience with network discovery, site surveys, device audits and technical documentation.
• Ability to interpret and validate network diagrams, device configurations and topology information.
• Experience working in live customer environments where change control and operational impact are important.
• Comfortable working onsite and independently with customer stakeholders.
• Strong troubleshooting and analytical skills.
• Clear communication skills, including the ability to explain technical findings to project managers and customer stakeholders.

Desirable Experience:

• Utilities, energy, industrial, manufacturing or operational technology environment experience.
• Exposure to OT / IT boundary environments, IDMZs or industrial network segmentation.
• Experience with network security assessments.
• Experience with Cisco, Fortinet, Palo Alto, Aruba, Meraki or similar network/security platforms.
• Experience with monitoring and observability tooling such as Datadog, SolarWinds, PRTG, SNMP, syslog or NetFlow/IPFIX.
• Experience supporting office moves, network migrations or infrastructure transformation projects.

Key Skills:

• Network discovery.
• Switching and routing.
• Firewall and network security awareness.
• VLAN and segmentation knowledge.
• Network troubleshooting.
• Site survey and audit.
• Network documentation.
• Monitoring protocol awareness.
• Technical risk identification.
• Customer-facing communication.

Candidate Profile:

The ideal candidate is a senior, hands-on network engineer who can walk into a customer site, understand the environment quickly, ask sensible questions, document findings clearly and support practical delivery activity. This should not be a junior smart hands profile. The customer needs someone senior enough to operate with limited guidance, identify technical risk and work credibly with both customer technical teams and partner architects.