Communications Network Architect

81918 - Communications Network Architect

This Communications Network Architect will report to the Network Capability Manager and will work within the Technology, Strategy Regulation and Support Services directorate based in our Ipswich office. You will be a permanent employee.

You will attract a salary of up to £85,000 depending on skills, qualifications and experience and a bonus of 7.5%. This role can also offer blended working after probationary period (6 months) - 3 days in the office and 2 remote.

We also provide the following additional benefits

• Reservist Leave – Additional 18 days full pay and 22 unpaid
• Personal Pension Plan – Personal contribution rates of 4% or 5% (UK Power Networks will make a corresponding contribution of 8% or 10%)
• Tenancy Loan Deposit Scheme, Season Ticket Loan
• Tax efficient benefits:
  Cycle to Work, Home & Tech, and Green Car Leasing Schemes
• Occupational Health support
• Switched On – scheme providing discount on hundreds of retailers’ products
• Discounted gym membership
• Employee Assistance Programme

As an important member of the technology team, you will manage the design, documentation and implementation in to BAU for the network and voice services covering many service providers for the IP/MPLS SCADA network across the UKPN estate.

You will come at an exciting time for UKPN as we integrate services into private- and public-cloud environments, and under a backdrop of convergence of IT and OT, with a focus on automation and orchestration of services, where you will play an important part.

We ask that you have technical expertise across multiple areas and functions - ability to work with pre-sales and internal teams on requirements gathering, creation of high-level and detailed design specs, ability to partner with development teams to automate configuration, delivery and support processes, and ownership of overall projects.

Direct reports: none. Supervise infrastructure personnel in 3rd party organisations.

Budget: none.

Support of Infrastructure Architecture circa 6,000 users and associated infrastructure.

Technical validation of the development of Infrastructure solutions ranging from £2m out of a total estimated installed base of circa £10m of in-scope IT equipment.

• Develop and help design and implement IT/OT network Infrastructure for UKPN.
• Design and support solutions specific to our Communications market.
• Developing the architecture that supports our wide portfolio of products in the Communications market including- LTE Roaming and clearing, Caller  protection services, Messaging services, SS7 and mobile signalling services.
• Design solutions such as large-scale SD-WAN, IPSec and MPLS VPN, IP multicast solutions and public cloud interconnects across wired and wireless comms.
• Work with strategic vendors for solution evaluation and customization and will provide third-level Operations support for incident resolution, and leadership over critical operational maintenance works.
• Monitor IT industry advances in technical infrastructure and associated new technology. Use this knowledge to assess likely impact on architecture, and to assist IT Operations and Business Architects in considering use of such technology etc.
• Develop standards and policy relating to technical architecture direction and usage.

• Familiarisation of SCADA network infrastructure and protocols.
• Experience of carrier-based multiplexer networks (TDM & SDH).
• Experience of modem configuration and serial comms protocols.
• Experience of Avaya/Extreme/Ruggedcom LAN switches and configuration.
• Experience resolving spanning-tree issues.
• Experience of designing complex multi-vendor, multi-technology IP networks.
• Experience with architecture and provisioning of solutions within MPLS or SD-WAN based environments.
• Experience in network design and implementation based on high-level customer requirements.
• TCP/IP and routing knowledge (BGP & OSPF).
• Experience with Customer Edge features such as Network Address Translation, VRRP/HSRP.
• Familiar with mobile networks.
• Familiar with optic fibre networks.
• Familiar with satellite and radio…