Network Service Owner in Bury

Established in 1981 with a single store in the Northwest of England, the JD Group is a leading omni-channel retailer of Sports Fashion, Outdoors and Gyms with our colleagues working in stores across several retail fascias in many markets around the world. JD Sports Fashion Plc was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1996 and has been a FTSE100 publicly quoted company since 2019 and continues to grow in the UK and internationally. We want to be the leading global omnichannel retailer in the sports and outdoor industry. To be a part of this successful company and help us to achieve this you will have the desire to ingrain our strategic goals of being a people-led, innovative and customer-focused organisation which provides operational excellence whilst identifying new areas of growth as part of our day to day objectives.

About the Role

The Network Service Owner is accountable for the end-to-end performance, stability, security and governance of the organisation's network infrastructure. This is a senior technical role that bridges hands-on engineering expertise with service ownership responsibilities. The postholder will lead network incident response, set and prioritise BAU activity, manage risk and performance reporting, and act as the primary escalation point for all network-related matters across the business.

Responsibilities

• Technical Ownership
  • Maintain deep technical knowledge of the organisation's network estate, including LAN, WAN, SD-WAN, wireless, firewalls, DNS, DHCP, proxies and cloud networking.
  • Provide technical direction and standards for network architecture, configuration and change.
  • Review and approve significant network changes, ensuring alignment with security and resilience requirements.
  • Act as the most senior technical escalation point for complex network issues.
  • Maintain up-to-date network documentation, topology diagrams and configuration records.
• BAU Prioritisation & Service Management
  • Own and manage the network BAU queue, setting priorities in line with business impact and risk.
  • Ensure day-to-day network operations are delivered to agreed service levels and that the team has clear direction on workload.
  • Define and maintain operational runbooks, procedures and standards.
  • Manage vendor and partner relationships relevant to network services, including ISPs, hardware vendors and managed service providers.
  • Oversee lifecycle management of network hardware and software, including patching, firmware and end-of-life planning.
  • Lead the response to all major network incidents, acting as the technical authority and single point of accountability during live incidents.
  • Ensure timely diagnosis, escalation and resolution, with clear communication to stakeholders throughout.
  • Produce post-incident reviews (PIRs) with root cause analysis and remediation actions, and track through to completion.
  • Feed into the wider organisational Incident Response process, ensuring network-related incidents are appropriately classified, logged and reported.
  • Participate in and support Cyber Incident Response where network forensics or containment activity is required.
• On-Call
  • Participate in a rotational on-call rota, providing out-of-hours cover for critical network incidents.
  • Respond within agreed SLAs to on-call alerts and escalations.
  • On-call participation is remunerated in line with the organisation's on-call allowance policy, with additional payment for call-outs outside of standard hours.
• Performance & Risk Reporting
  • Define and own network KPIs and SLAs, reporting performance on a regular basis to senior stakeholders.
  • Produce monthly service reports covering availability, incidents, capacity and risk.
  • Maintain a network risk register, identifying emerging risks and ensuring appropriate mitigations are in place.
  • Provide input into wider technology risk forums, including flagging where network control coverage is incomplete or where resilience gaps exist.
  • Support audit and compliance activity, including providing evidence for ITGC controls, PCI DSS, and any other applicable frameworks.
• Governance & Strategy
  • Contribute to the network technology roadmap, identifying opportunities to modernise, simplify or improve resilience.
  • Ensure the network estate aligns with the organisation's Zero Trust and security strategy.
  • Engage with the Information Security team to ensure network controls are aligned with the security framework and that changes are assessed for risk.
  • Participate in Controls by Design and change governance processes, providing network input into new system and platform onboarding.
  • Support capacity planning to ensure the network can scale in line with business growth.
• Stakeholder Engagement
  • Act as a credible and trusted advisor to senior stakeholders on all network-related matters.
  • Translate complex technical issues into clear, non-technical language for executive audiences.
  • Collaborate with Infrastructure, Security, Cloud, and End User Computing teams to ensure joined-up service delivery.

Qualifications

• Proven experience in a senior network engineering or network management role within a complex, enterprise environment.
• Strong hands-on technical knowledge across routing, switching, firewalls, SD-WAN, wireless and cloud networking (AWS, Azure or equivalent).
• Experience leading major network incidents from detection through to resolution and post-incident review.
• Demonstrable experience managing BAU priorities and team workload in a service management context.
• Experience producing and presenting performance and risk reports to senior stakeholders.
• Familiarity with ITIL service management principles.
• Experience working with third-party vendors and managed service providers.
• Comfortable participating in an on-call rota and responding to out-of-hours incidents.

Required Skills

• Industry certifications such as CCNP, or equivalent (Cisco, Palo Alto, Fortinet etc.).
• Experience with network security tools including next-generation firewalls, proxies and Zero Trust network access (e.g. Zscaler, Netskope).