Infrastructure & Connectivity - Senior Network Engineer

Whitbread has launched one of its biggest network transformation projects in its history in the industry and our new core network has a fabric running at 40Gbps, running out of multiple data centres, with near instantaneous stateful failover of service

Our network engineering team here at Whitbread are facing an exciting period of growth and there is a real opportunity to have ownership of the Whitbread network, including performance, capacity and lifecycle management.

As the Senior Network Engineer you will help to drive a huge network transformation to our 1,200 locations by leading and developing the Engineering function of the Whitbread Networks Team, providing mentoring and development to staff, as well as managing workload within the team

With more than 1,800 WAN links, 3,000 switches, and 40,000 access points, our network is every bit as big as our brand.   We are proud of our tech stack, you'll have the opportunity to work with Juniper, Cisco, Meraki, HP Aruba.

Role:  Senior Network Engineer

Salary: Starting from £64,000pa (for the right experience)

Contract Type:  Full-Time and Permanent

Location:  Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire (LU5 5XE) and a hybrid way of working with a minimum of 3 days a week in the office. Occasional visits to our hotels/restaurants (once every 2 months)

Why You’ll Love It Here

• Bonus: Company Performance based bonus of up to 30% of base salary
• Healthcare: Individual BUPA healthcare
• Discounts: Up to 60% discount on Premier Inn stays and 25% discount on our Restaurant brand

Check out all our benefits here: https://www.whitbreadcareers.com/about-us/benefits/

What you’ll be doing:

• Lead and develop the Engineering function of the Whitbread Networks Team, providing mentoring and development to staff, as well as managing workload within the team
• Assist in evaluating new requirements, technical design and standards
• Ensure Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity tests are planned and manage the execution of such tests within Whitbread.
• Identify and implement improvements to the estate in order to improve service to our customers, and increase operational and delivery efficiency
• Implementation of new network solutions and/or improving the efficiency of current networks
• Monitoring network performance and ensure system availability and reliability

• Technical leadership in major incident scenarios is required
• Manage relationships with major vendors and service providers to ensure that the services they provide meet the needs of the organisation.
• Act as mentor and coach to more junior members of the team and facilitate a close working relationship across geographically distributed teams. Provide technical training, share and embed best practice and processes, and ensure these are adhered to 

What you’ll need:

• Proven hands-on network engineering experience
• Proven technical leadership experience
• Proven experience in managing external IT service providers.
• Experience with Aruba or Cisco infrastructure devices (switching/routing/security)
• Hands-on experience with monitoring, network diagnostic and network analytics tools
• Solid understanding of SD Networking, including SD-WAN and SD-Access 
• Solid understanding of the OSI and TCP/IP model
• Strong knowledge of network security, not least covering Next Generation and Web Application firewalls
• Deep understanding of networking protocols and technologies (e.g., IPsec, HSRP, BGP, OSPF, 802.11, QoS, MPLS and VoIP)
• Solid understanding of 802.1x authentication
• The latest industry trends / standards / tools / technologies for technical solutions management in the enterprise networking arena 
• Proven experience in mentoring and coaching

Be part of our Engineering Team at Whitbread

Keeping up with new platforms and real-world technologies allows us to get closer to our audience than ever before. Our dynamic Network Engineering Team are subject experts and a team who are passionate about what they do. 

We encourage your application. Apply today or contact our recruitment team for more information.