Network Lead

• Provide hands-on support, technical escalation, design and implementation across networks, connectivity and supported telephony services. • Own technical work through resolution, maintain secure and resilient services, and manage and personally deliver small and medium projects while contributing to larger programmes. • Own BAU support and complex incidents, requests and problems across LAN, WAN, wireless, routing, switching, firewalls, VPNs, telephony, unified communications and carriers; retain technical ownership and maintain client updates. • Design and personally implement approved site improvements, network refreshes, segmentation, SD-WAN and multi-site connectivity; configure, test and cut over solutions with rollback and operational handover. • Manage approved small and medium projects: define scope, estimates, milestones, resources, dependencies, risks and change requests; track effort and progress, update clients and colleagues, and secure acceptance and handover. • Translate requirements into designs, bills of materials, implementation plans and support assumptions; validate feasibility and dependencies before commitment. • Maintain configuration standards, topology diagrams, addressing, VLAN and circuit records, device baselines and operational runbooks. • Administer Fortinet and Palo Alto policies, NAT, VPNs, routing and HA. • Apply approved segmentation and secure management baselines, AAA, SNMPv3, logging and firmware remediation; document exceptions. • Plan controlled changes with testing, access requirements, outage assessment, rollback and post-change validation. • Configure monitoring, thresholds and configuration backups; use logs, counters, packet captures and flow data. • Test configuration restoration, firewall HA, redundant links and routing failover. • Coordinate carriers and hardware or software vendors, retain technical case ownership and document dependency-related delays. • Configure and troubleshoot APs and controllers, authentication, roaming, interference, channels and capacity. • Interpret survey results and validate compatibility and licensing. • Diagnose cabling, optics, interfaces, PoE and device faults; configure or replace equipment when assigned and guide onsite engineers and the NOC remotely. • Review recurring faults. • Contribute to bids, peer design reviews, technical mentoring, automation and service acceptance for completed projects. • Lead assigned technical workstreams and contribute designs, estimates and delivery assurance on larger projects under the appointed project manager and approval framework. • Implement and support telephony and unified communications, including SIP services, call routing, numbering, gateways and collaboration-platform integration. • Diagnose voice registration, call setup, one-way audio and quality faults; coordinate carriers, number porting, cutovers and recovery documentation. • Record assignments, technical updates, time, evidence, escalation, handover and closure through IT-Serve’s service desk/PSA and delivery processes. • Keep colleagues and clients informed. • Follow IT-Serve security procedures, protect confidential information and escalate unsafe work, security concerns or delivery risks promptly. • Strong Fortinet or Palo Alto expertise and practical administration in the other, including policies, NAT, VPNs, routing, HA and troubleshooting; deeper expertise in both is desirable. • Strong experience in both Fortinet and Palo Alto platforms, plus relevant Cisco and wireless technologies. • Python or Ansible automation, APIs and reusable configuration templates; ExpressRoute, advanced cloud networking and larger or regulated-client projects. • Session border controllers, Teams Phone Direct Routing or Operator Connect, and relevant telephony vendor platforms. • Relevant firewall, wireless, cloud networking and ITIL qualifications are desirable; maintain knowledge of the technologies actually supported. • Practical Azure VNets, subnets, NSGs, VPN connectivity and routing; use scripts, APIs or templates for repeatable checks and configuration with testing, secure credentials and approved changes. • Ability to manage small and medium technical projects, including resource coordination, scope control, risk management, progress reporting and operational handover. • Practical Teams Phone or comparable platform experience.