Network Engineer

We’re building an inclusive work environment

Here at Zen your gender, race, ethnicity, neurodiversity, sexuality, sub culture, size, introversion, extraversion, family background and everything else that shapes you does matter to us. Because they matter to you and are part of who you are.

We’re interested in you as an individual and here you’ll find opportunities to develop, be recognised and hopefully enjoy yourself along the way. So don’t hold back, there is a warm welcome for everyone at Zen and we look forward to meeting you.

The hiring manager for this role is Brad Hunt / Khalid Daloub, we are currently not seeking agency support to fill this role.

The Role

Working within the Network Engineering team, our Network Engineers are responsible for building, operating, maintaining and routine deployment of Zen’s core IP, transit and peering, distribution, access, datacentre and exchange networks.

Ideally you will have hands-on operations experience within the ISP industry as you join the Network Engineering team.

Reporting to the Network Engineering Team Leader, you must have an excellent track record within a Network Engineering role and have a genuine interest in developing your technical and soft skills. Working closely with your team colleagues, you will be a positive communicator and a proactive team member. The ability to work within a team and to deadlines is also essential.

You will be a point of escalation for Zen’s NOC team, demonstrating problem solving skills and ability to learn quickly and adapt skills and knowledge. Part of your responsibilities will be the participation in a 24x7 call-out rota (after qualifying period). In carrying out these activities you will proactively contribute to and support the development of junior members of the network engineering team to ensure we can continue to achieve our goals for the department and for Zen.

The products, services and vendors within scope for this role are:

• Copper, LLU and FTTX
• Ethernet, IP-VPN, QoS and VoIP
• Core IP, transit and peering, distribution, access, datacentre and enterprise networks
• Juniper, Cisco, Arista and Huawei
• Monitoring and Graphing platforms
• Network Automation

Objectives:

• Ensure our core network is operated to achieve required levels of security, availability and performance.
• Quickly and effectively deal with faults and incidents, ensuring escalations and communication are dealt with in a timely manner.
• Participate in projects to implement changes to our core network in a safe and timely manner.
• Continuous build/deployment of routine network expansions, such as our exchange roll out.
• Encourage and contribute to the ongoing development of our NOC team, acting as a role model and providing coaching.
• Apply agreed security and technical standards in our operating practices.

Key Responsibilities:

• Carry out timely patching and upgrades according to the maintenance schedule or in response to incidents.
• Carry out scheduled testing that verifies security and failover mechanisms on our services, ensuring that recovery procedures are kept up to date and understood by the team.
• Completion of complex implementation plans.
• Completion of LLD and POC/Lab testing.
• Respond (with a sense of urgency) to faults, alerts, escalations and change requests on our network.
• Identify and escalate issues on problematic platforms or highlight recurring technical problems.
• Carrying out planned work outside office hours where needed to minimise customer impact.
• Participate in a 24x7 call-out rota once you reach the required benchmarks of the role. (supported by escalation)
• Ability to work on own initiative
• Patient & friendly with excellent interpersonal skill
• Able to demonstrate a natural aptitude for dealing with people.

Experience:

• Experience working in an ISP, Telco or other Managed Services environment
• Familiar working in Data Centre and Openreach Exchange environments.
• Excellent knowledge across routing & switching
• An understanding of ITIL would be advantageous.
• Good knowledge of automation across Ansible and/or Python
• Experience of writing technical documentation

Technical Skills - Essential

• Working towards CCNP/JNCIS or equivalent level of knowledge
• Good troubleshooting and network diagnostic skills.
• Experience operating a network using BGP, MPLS, IS-IS and OSFP
• Experience in working with graphing and monitoring platforms.
• Experience working with firewalls and managed switches.
• Writing LLD’s and Implementation plans for non-routine work, for yourself or others to implement
• Strong analytical skills
• Experience with identifying potential service risks and issues and providing effective technical solutions to mitigate these risks.

Technical Skills - Desirable

• Tools development: Perl, shell, PHP, Python, SQL or other scripting languages
• Knowledge of fibre and WDM systems
• GEA and EAD Services
• Experience of building and working with test and lab environments
• Spirent testing
• Azure DevOps