Senior ICT Senior Networks Engineer (Permanent) in London

IMG is a leading global sports marketing agency, specializing in media rights management and sales, multi-channel content production and distribution, brand partnerships, strategic consulting, digital services, and events management. It powers growth of revenues, fanbases and IP for more than 200 federations, associations, events, and teams, including the National Football League, English Premier League, International Olympic Committee, National Hockey League, Major League Soccer, ATP and WTA Tours, the AELTC (Wimbledon), Euroleague Basketball, CONMEBOL, DP World Tour, and The R&A, as well as UFC, WWE, and PBR.

This role is being hired into Cingularity, a division of IMG Studios who are specialists in bespoke live video networking and production solutions. Cingularity operates at each stage of the remote production workflow, delivering quality network designs and primary distribution services to premium broadcast networks and sports rights holders globally. IMG acquired Cingularity in September 2022 to provide the expertise to guide IMG’s remote production evolution toward a hybrid model of fibre, satellite, cloud and IP.

The Senior Network Engineer (NetOps) at Cingularity is a pivotal role demanding technical expertise and innovative thinking. As a core member of our engineering team, you will be responsible for designing, building, and maintaining the complex infrastructure that powers our mission-critical transmission systems.

This position is designed for an engineer who can bridge the gap between traditional networking methodologies and modern NetOps practices. You will take ownership of our core networking infrastructure—including a specialised DTM (Dynamic Synchronous Transfer Mode) network—while strategically introducing automation to enhance resilience and performance.

• Global Telemetry & Network Management: Design and operate distributed systems with an advanced understanding of OSPF and BGP. Maintain a solid understanding of Multicast routing to ensure efficient data delivery across broadcast environments.
• DTM Specialisation: Take primary responsibility for the management and optimisation of the DTM network, ensuring it meets the rigorous demands of live broadcast. Manage and refine a global telemetry network to ensure consistent data flow and visibility across all international transmission points.
• Capacity Planning: Manage network capacity and advise on hardware/bandwidth upgrades triggered by business growth and specific customer projects.
• Traffic Forwarding: Ensure optimal performance and data integrity for high-availability, scalable systems used for critical live content broadcasting.

• Network Security & Maintenance: Take ownership of network security, implementing best practices for access control and protection across the entire ecosystem. Manage and execute regular firmware upgrades, patching, and maintenance across all network hardware to ensure stability and mitigate vulnerabilities. Implement network-level security hardening to protect mission-critical transmission paths.

• NetOps & Monitoring Refinement: Build and refine monitoring techniques where the primary "customers" are our internal TOC and Event Engineering teams. Utilise and assist in the development of modern monitoring and logging systems. Implement automation strategies for infrastructure management using tools such as Ansible, Python, and shell scripting. Lead the transition from manual workflows to automated NetOps processes to reduce manual intervention and improve efficiency. Proactively monitor performance and serve as a level 3 escalation point for complex networking issues. Mentor and collaborate with technology teams on engineering projects and the resolution of high-level technical issues. Assist engineers in learning networking concepts and the specific architecture of the Cingularity network. Lead technical network projects from concept to deployment, meeting schedules and budget constraints.

Networking Expertise: Proven experience in securing network infrastructure and managing hardware firmware lifecycles. Demonstrable experience using Python and Ansible for automation, scripting, and integration. Knowledge of SMPTE ST 2110 networks and related timing/synchronisation requirements. Experience using GitHub for managing automation scripts and configuration. Understanding of real-time transport protocols (RTP, UDP, SRT, Zixi) and video encoding (AVC, HEVC, JPEG-XS).