Network Automation Engineer

Description:

Are you a skilled programmer with extensive experience in network engineering? Use those skills to enable the world-leading research, learning and innovation at Imperial College London.

The Network Automation Engineer role sits within the Networks group, forming part of the Digital Infrastructure section of Information & Communication Technologies (ICT). The purpose of the role is to drive the automation of the Imperial network, reducing toil and enhancing reliability, strengthening the foundations of our digital infrastructure.

Imperial has a large campus network along with two data centres and an ever-growing public cloud presence, serving tens of thousands of staff and students. Your role will be focussed on defining, constructing and supporting the tools and systems to configure and operate the network from a central source of truth. Your work will realise the full value of the API enabled network equipment that Imperial has invested in and allow it to be configured and operated in an integrated way. Day to day configuration activities will be automated or delegated to users through self-service tools to enable a much faster stand-up time for new services.

You will work closely with the Head of Networks and the Principal Network Engineer to ensure that automation capabilities and operational simplicity are a central consideration in the continuous evolution of the network. Additionally, you will be a subject matter expert for network automation, providing advice and guidance to other team members.

You will be working with a broad range of networking technologies to support the varied needs of the university community, including very high throughput high performance computing systems to support cutting-edge research and extensive AV over IP systems to support leading education alongside the more traditional corporate applications. There will be the opportunity to work with our modern AI-driven WiFi platform, Zero Trust Network Access solution, data centre load balancing, security zoning using MPLS and EVPN-VXLAN, 400 Gigabit Ethernet, DWDM and much more.

What you would be doing

• You will have responsibility for designing, building and supporting the network automation products
• You will perform full life-cycle management of active network equipment including: purchasing, installation, configuration, monitoring, issue resolution, decommissioning and disposal
• You will ensure the reliability and performance of the network by including automated monitoring and statistics gathering
• You will provide input to the strategy, roadmap and change delivery plans for the network, particularly influencing the advancement of automation and autonomous behaviour
• You will provide operational support for network products with a particular focus on eliminating recurring issues through automation or process changes
• You will understand, implement and automate security controls to contribute to the security culture of the organisation
• You will build and maintain strong stakeholder relationships to ensure that the services you provide meet the needs of the organisation
• You will continually develop and enhance your knowledge of network products and services, ensuring an understanding of how future trends could enhance the service offering