Senior Network Engineer in Bedford

We are seeking a highly skilled Senior Network Engineer to design, implement, and maintain our network infrastructure. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience in network administration and architecture, with a strong focus on security and performance optimization. This role involves mentoring Junior Network Engineers and ensuring the reliability and efficiency of our network systems.

Accountabilities and Responsibilities

• Design, deploy and maintain functional networks (LAN, WLAN, WAN, Wi-Fi).
• Design, deploy and maintain the Paragon network infrastructure.
• Support Paragon’s in-house and cloud-based networks, respond to tickets within agreed SLA’s ensuring all incidents are resolved and documented.
• Accountable for Paragon’s network boundary and security systems covering IDS/IPS, Advanced threat prevention, Web content filtering, DNS protection, and DLP.
• Management and Configuration of all network devices in line with industry best practices and regulatory controls across routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, VPN and Wi-Fi.
• Monitor network performance and ensure system availability and reliability.
• Resolve network issues escalated by ticket or direct notification.
• Automate tasks and monitor their effectiveness.
• Escalation management, 3rd line support, and development of the Paragon Global network.
• Deliver positive leadership, mentoring and development of all team members delivering a collaborative and cohesive working environment.
• Create, oversee, and test security measures (e.g. access authentication and disaster recovery).
• Create, update and maintain complete technical documentation.
• Suggest improvements to network performance, capacity, and scalability.
• Required to perform out of hours work upon agreement and will be part of an on-call rota for Incident support and resolution.
• Perform system maintenance, patching and updates ensuring compliance with Paragon’s security policies and controls.
• May be required to travel to site (Paragon or Client).

Competencies

• Technical Expertise – Advanced Formal training or equivalent experience in Networking systems design, configuration and support.
• Relationship Management - Able to communicate clearly and concisely to both technical and non-technical personnel.
• Customer Management - Able to work with internal and external customers to establish/validate requirements.
• Quality Management - Understands Paragon’s Quality policy and able to follow standard operating procedures.
• Change Management – Understands and adheres fully to Paragon’s Change Management procedure.
• Project Management – Understands the Paragon Technology Project methodology and complies with standards set.
• ITIL – Foundation course completed, understands and follows ITIL practices and procedures.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team with excellent organisational and mentoring skills.

Skills

• Expert knowledge of routing protocols, including BGP, OSPF and EIGRP.
• Extensive experience with campus networking technologies (Cisco, Juniper and HP).
• Strong expertise in wireless networking (Meraki and Ruckus).
• In-depth experience with datacentre networking, including Cisco Nexus and NDFC, Arista CloudVision, EVPN VXLAN, and Juniper/Cisco routing platforms.
• Advanced knowledge of IPsec VPN technologies.
• Extensive experience in designing and configuring Palo Alto firewalls.
• Additional experience with Cisco ASA, Fortinet and Juniper SRX firewalls.
• Strong background in load balancing and WAF technologies (F5, Kemp and Imperva).
• Hands-on experience with network management and monitoring tools such as SolarWinds, NetBox, Cisco ISE and Zabbix.
• Experience in network automation, particularly with Ansible and Python, would be highly advantageous.
• Public cloud networking experience across Azure, Oracle Cloud, Megaport and AWS.
• Experience with Arista Velocloud SD-WAN (highly desirable).
• Experience supporting PCI-compliant environments.

Qualifications

• Proven experience as a Senior Network Engineer.
• CCNP Certified, CCIE/CCDP is highly desirable.
• Palo Alto, AWS and Azure certifications highly desirable.
• BSc/BA in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.

The job holder will be expected to display the following competencies which are essential to the role:

• Continuous Improvement - Develops solutions to deliver great results; tries new and different ways to address work problems; identifies opportunities to optimize resources, reduce expenses and/or increase revenues.
• Inspire Trust - Demonstrates behaviours of honest, courage, integrity and respect; behaves in ways that build a “Speak Up” culture where individuals are encouraged to safely raise, discuss and address ethical concerns.
• Teamwork - Works cooperatively with others, inside and outside the organization, to accomplish objectives and achieve goals.
• Accountability - Accepts responsibility; takes pride in personal contribution toward the company’s goals and successes; delivers on commitments.
• Customer Focus - Collaborates and behaves in ways that delivers an exceptional customer experience with high quality products and services; focuses energy on discovering, understanding and meeting the needs of the customer; develops and sustains productive relationships that are built on trust and fosters customer loyalty.
• Developing Self - Committed to learning by identifying personal strengths and development needs; proactively seeks opportunities to reach personal potential and continually enhance contribution.