Network & Telephony Lead

Apply now Job no: 564969
Work type: Full time
Site: Redditch
Categories: IT
Location: Worcestershire
Salary: Competitive salary + Car allowance
Business Area: Halfords Support Centre

Halfords is on a journey - building the future of motoring and cycling and looking for people who want to help shape what comes next. We’re a place for cocreators: people who want to make a real impact, take ownership and be part of something that’s still evolving.

Technology at Halfords is at a turning point. We’re modernising our foundations, sharpening our delivery, and ensuring every technology decision is connected to real commercial and customer outcomes.

We're looking for people who act as trusted advisors to the business, take end-to-end accountability for outcomes, and can balance pace with long‑term architectural integrity. Innovation here means practical, scalable solutions, not ideas that stay on whiteboards.

Halfords operates a hybrid working policy – this position will be based 3 days per week at our support centre in Redditch, West Midlands.

As Network & Telephony Lead within our Technology Infrastructure function, you'll take full ownership of the network and telephony estate across our corporate, retail, and garage locations. With a Juniper SD-WAN deployment in its final stages, a WiFi modernisation programme to drive forward, and a telephony estate spanning Teams Phone Direct Routing and a customer‑facing contact centre platform, there's plenty of substance to get into from day one.

Day to day, you'll oversee WAN, LAN, SD-WAN, WiFi, and site connectivity across a geographically distributed estate, own the PSTN and Direct Routing layer underpinning Teams Phone, and maintain the contact centre telephony platform. You'll co‑own network security alongside the Head of Information Security and manage the outsourced service provider, setting clear performance expectations and driving continuous improvement against agreed outcomes.

This is a hands‑on technical leadership role with real breadth, spanning infrastructure delivery, supplier management, and cross‑functional collaboration. If you have deep network expertise, experience completing large‑scale deployment programmes in live operational environments, and the confidence to hold an outsourced partner to account, this is a role where the scope and pace will keep things genuinely interesting.

• Complete the global Juniper SD-WAN deployment, driving the programme to a controlled close, ensuring all sites are fully transitioned and the platform is handed into a stable operational state with appropriate runbooks, monitoring, and support processes
• Own and operate the full network estate across all corporate, retail, and garage locations, covering WAN, LAN, SD-WAN, WiFi, and site connectivity, ensuring reliability and performance across a diverse, geographically distributed estate
• Lead the WiFi modernisation programme, assessing remaining legacy wireless infrastructure, building a prioritised refresh roadmap, and delivering upgrades in a planned and minimally disruptive way
• Own the PSTN and Direct Routing connectivity layer for Teams Phone, working alongside the Modern Workplace Lead to ensure the telephony infrastructure is reliable and correctly integrated
• Own the contact centre telephony platform, maintaining availability and performance, and managing the outsourced provider relationship
• Co‑own network security with the Head of Information Security, implementing and maintaining firewall policy, network segmentation, VLAN design, and remote access controls
• Manage the outsourced network and telephony service provider, holding the partner accountable for service quality and driving continuous improvement against agreed outcomes
• Define network and connectivity requirements in partnership with Procurement and collaborate with the Cloud & Hosting Lead on cloud network architecture and connectivity standards

• Deep, hands‑on technical expertise across WAN, LAN, WiFi, and SD‑WAN, with proven experience designing, deploying, and operating enterprise network infrastructure in multi‑site, geographically distributed environments
• Demonst…