Senior Network Engineer

Role Overview We are seeking a highly experienced Senior Network Engineer to join our technology infrastructure team in London. This role requires a strong hands-on engineer with deep technical expertise in designing, implementing, maintaining, and troubleshooting complex enterprise network environments within a highly regulated banking environment. The successful candidate will play a critical role in ensuring the resilience, security, and performance of network services supporting business-critical banking operations, trading systems, data centres, cloud connectivity, and branch infrastructure. This position is ideal for an engineer who combines strong architectural understanding with a practical delivery mindset and who remains technically engaged in day-to-day operational activities. Key Responsibilities Design, implement and support enterprise-grade network infrastructure across on-premise and cloud environments Manage and optimise LAN, WAN, WLAN, and data centre network environments Perform advanced troubleshooting across routing, switching, firewall, VPN, and load balancing technologies Lead hands-on incident resolution for complex network outages and performance issues Maintain secure connectivity between data centres, branch offices, cloud platforms, and third-party providers Support network segmentation, resilience, redundancy and disaster recovery design Implement and maintain network monitoring, alerting and performance analysis tools Collaborate closely with cyber security, infrastructure, cloud, and application teams Support change management, release activities, and technical documentation in line with banking governance standards Participate in on-call support for critical production incidents when required Ensure all network solutions comply with internal security standards, audit requirements, and regulatory expectations

Required Technical Skills Strong hands-on experience with Cisco routing and switching in enterprise environments Deep expertise in BGP, OSPF, MPLS, VLANs, STP, HSRP, VRRP Strong practical experience with Palo Alto Networks firewalls , VPN technologies, and security policies Experience with load balancers such as F5 Networks Strong knowledge of network security controls, segmentation, NAC, and secure remote access Experience with cloud networking in Amazon Web Services and/or Microsoft Hands-on experience with network monitoring tools such as SolarWinds, PRTG, or similar Experience in data centre networking and high-availability environments Strong troubleshooting capability at packet level using tools such as Wireshark Good scripting capability in Python, Bash, or automation tooling is advantageous Required Experience Minimum 8 to 10 years of network engineering experience in complex enterprise environments Proven experience within banking, financial services, or other highly regulated industries Strong operational experience in mission-critical production environments Demonstrated ability to work directly on live infrastructure with minimal supervision Experience supporting audit, compliance, and regulated change environments Preferred Qualifications Cisco certifications such as CCNP or CCIE Palo Alto certification preferred Experience with hybrid cloud connectivity and SD-WAN Exposure to zero trust networking principles Personal Profile Strong ownership mentality and accountability Calm under pressure during production incidents Highly practical, solution-oriented and detail-focused Able to communicate clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholders Comfortable operating in a fast-paced banking environment Important Note This role requires a genuinely hands-on engineer. Candidates with primarily managerial or purely architectural backgrounds without recent operational delivery experience will not be considered.