Infrastructure Operations Network Specialist

Job Purpose

Our Client are a Highly competitive and fast moving organisation within the area of Consumer Services. They are currently seeking to appoint an Infrastructure Operations Network Specialist. This role will provide an integral part of the operations service delivery team, responsible for driving service excellence, stability and support in the technology operational environment for their customers.

The position is essentially a Hands off  Network specialist who wants to move their career towards IT management .

The Infrastructure Operations Network Specialist role will ensure Infrastructure Services provided by either Managed Service Providers or from Third Party Vendors are delivered as per the agreements in place, and remain robust, stable and perform throughout their respective Life Cycles. It also includes managing operational relationships and performance of their key technology service partners while managing expectations of key internal stakeholders to deliver results in line with business goals.

Responsibilities (include but not limited to)

• To be responsible for defining, reviewing and managing key metrics to control day-to-day performance and stability across the portfolio of Infrastructure network services
• Responsible for identifying continuous improvement opportunities and ensuring they are implemented in a timely and controlled manner via Managed Service Providers and Third Party Vendors
• Responsible for Governing and Assuring Technical Change and Technical Proposals from Managed Service Providers and Third Party Vendors
• Responsible for the delivery of our WAN strategy, as well as on-going continuous service improvement
• Work with 3rd party and in house design teams to delivery fit for purpose network designs in relation to Lan, Wan and IP telephony

Key Requirements

Specifically the Operations Technical Network Specialist will be responsible for the following:

Procurement

Supplier Management

Attend and provide technical inputs into vendor service reviews

Major Incident Management

Take an active role in the MIM process.

Problem Management

Due to the nature of the role, it is expected that the successful candidate will take an active role when it comes to problem management to ensure problems are closed out.

Change Management

When required raise Change Requests and submit them to the CAB for approval

Continual Service Improvement (CSI)

Take a lead in relation to WAN/LAN/IP telephony for Continual Service Improvement (CSI)

Quality

In support of the Service Delivery managers:

• Ensure that the service provided by vendors and managed service suppliers deliver against agreed SLAs or statements of work

Knowledge Management

New Services

Ensure that New Services are technically robust and supportable

Required Education and Experience

• Educated to degree level in a Computing or business discipline or equivalent
• Exposure of mission critical High Availability design and deployment in large transaction volume environments   (Preferred)
• Experience of setting and managing services with a wide range of vendors to support solutions in a multi-country environment
• Previous experience of managing large scale environments is required.
• The Operations Network Specialist  must be an effective problem solver and be well able to motivate suppliers and technical teams.
• Experience in TOGAF and ITIL methodologies
• Ability to communicate effectively in writing and verbally to a wide range of people at all levels including communicating complex technical issues to non-technical user base.
• Experience identifying and understanding user issues and managing user expectations.
• High level of energy, curious minded, a positive can do attitude.
• Ability to operate within a highly pressurised and fast paced environment, consistently delivering results and achieving corporate objectives on time and within the agreed parameters.
• Ability to work well under pressure

Technical Skills

• Routing technologies (BGP, IS-IS, OSPF) including VRF
• Switching technologies (VPC, Spanning Tree, Cisco Nexus 7K, 5K and 2K. Catalyst 6500 & 4500 series Switches)
• Load balancing technologies
• Proven track record of supporting WAN/LAN based network services
• Experience of network security & Firewalls (Fortigate Appliances, Checkpoint, Cisco ASA, Juniper SSG/SSL)
• Ability to troubleshoot Firewall changes, including IPSec VPN, Remote Access VPN and SSL VPN
• Thorough knowledge of TCP/IP protocols and be able to troubleshoot connectivity issues, Layer2/3 Switches, routing and WAN optimisation.
• Demonstrable significant experience in Cisco hardware and software troubleshooting MPLS, WAN,
• WiFi – Experience of Wi-Fi technologies and architectures

Desired Skills

• Cisco CCNP/CCDP Data Centre Certified
• Checkpoint CCSA/CCSE certified

For the Successful Candidate

• An opportunity to join a leading international organisation.
• Learning and progression prospects in a challenging and progressive environment
• Competitive salary and benefits package.