Core Probing Lead

Location: London OR Newbury + Hybrid

Salary: Excellent base salary plus bonus and Vodafone benefits

Working Hours: Full time 37.5 hours per week – Monday to Friday

Our hybrid working approach allows staff to work both in the office and at home, requiring 2‑3 days per week in the office for a minimum of 8 days per month. You should work with your line manager to understand what their expectations are for you, your specific role and your team.

This role leads the design, implementation, and optimisation of core network probing solutions to ensure 24/7 visibility of service quality from the customer’s perspective, providing regular core probing result reporting to wider business. It plays a critical role in detecting, analysing, and resolving systemic issues, supporting Vodafone Three’s commitment to delivering best‑in‑class network experience.

• Own and manage the core probing strategy and solutions for end‑to‑end service quality monitoring.
• Ensure continuous visibility of core network performance through advanced probing tools.
• Help with trace analysis of critical customer‑impacting issues, identifying root causes and driving resolution.
• Collaborate with engineering, operations, and CX teams to address systemic performance issues.
• Maintain and optimise probing infrastructure, ensuring accuracy, reliability, and cost efficiency.
• Deliver regular insights and reports on core network performance trends and anomalies.
• Drive automation and innovation in probing and analysis processes.
• Manage vendor relationships and ensure compliance with SLAs for probing services.
• Support benchmarking and supplier performance initiatives with probing data.
• Contribute to continuous improvement in service quality assurance processes.

• Deep understanding of core network protocols and architectures, including IP, TCP, UDP, TLS/SSL, HTTP/HTTPS, and QUIC.
• Proven experience using probing tools and methodologies to measure and assess service quality.
• Good knowledge of mobile network benchmarking practices and performance comparison techniques.
• Hands‑on experience with trace analysis (including pcap files) and fault/root cause identification.
• Excellent analytical and problem‑solving capability.
• Ability to manage suppliers and technical work streams effectively.
• Strong stakeholder engagement and cross‑functional collaboration skills.
• Experience driving automation and process optimisation initiatives.

We care about our people’s success by offering great pay, bonuses, up to 28 days off plus bank holidays, and paid time for charity work. You can personalise our benefits for you and your family, like discounts, vouchers, a pension plan and more. We help with your career through learning tools and top‑notch parental leave policies.

We are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and all offers of employment for this role are subject to background checks, including criminal (DBS) and financial checks to meet the regulators’ standards.

We use AI in different parts of our business to boost innovation, improve efficiency, and create new opportunities. We know many candidates use AI to fine‑tune their CVs or prepare for interviews, but what we really care about is your unique experiences and achievements.