Job Description

Established in 1981 with a single store in the Northwest of England, the JD Group is a leading omni-channel retailer of Sports Fashion, Outdoors and Gyms with our colleagues working in stores across several retail fascias in many markets around the world.

JD Sports Fashion Plc was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1996 and has been a FTSE100 publicly quoted company since 2019 and continues to grow in the UK and internationally.

We want to be the leading global omnichannel retailer in the sports and outdoor industry. To be a part of this successful company and help us to achieve this you will have the desire to ingrain our strategic goals of being a people-led, innovative and customer-focused organisation which provides operational excellence whilst identifying new areas of growth as part of our day to day objectives.

Reporting to the Network Service Owner, the Senior Network Engineer will act as a senior member of the Network Team, combining day to day technical tasks, with prioritising the team’s response to incidents, and ensuring all network related systems are functioning as expected.

The Senior Network Support Engineer is expected to combine responding to incidents, day to day administration and technical project work on all systems supported by the Network Team, including but not limited to router and switch hardware, Firewall, Wifi and VoIP Services.

In addition, the Senior Network Engineer will take responsibility for ensuring the services provided by the Network Team are operational, and that all incidents relating to these services are responded to and resolved in a timely manner.

The Senior Network Engineer should be a self-motivated individual with a good understanding of complex technical environments and the technologies used. Demonstrating excellent problem-solving skills with the tenacity to own and drive incidents through to resolution.

Responsibilities

General

• Establish and maintain effective relationships with the business users and Group IT teams, and facilitate communication and education between the two disciplines

• Attends weekly team meetings and ‘project progress’ meetings as required.

• Liaise with 3rd Party Suppliers and report on their performance to feed into regular service reviews

• Monitor Change Requests that are presented to the IT CAB and highlight any network related concerns through requests for additional information

Operational

• Monitor incidents escalated by the IT Service Desk and ensure they are resolved in accordance with their priority and applicable SLA’s, assigning ownership to other members of the team as required

• Prioritise the day to day tasks that need to be undertaken by the IT Network Team, assigning them as required to other team members

• Be technical the lead for the systems that support the store trading estate (UK and Europe) 1000+ outlets, as well as Core networking and Datacentre components

• Identify opportunities where central management of any IT equipment would reduce support overhead, and work with the Network Service Owner to implement such systems

• Lead the day to day maintenance of the routing, switching and firewalling estate, including patch management, backups and performance monitoring,

• Collaborate with business users ensuring that requests for the services provided by the IT Network Team are aligned with the business requirements

• Work with the Network Service Owner to create and implement service improvement plans aimed at increasing network performance and reducing support incidents

• Professionally represent the IT Network Team as a technical consultant on projects as allocated by line management

• Act as an escalation point for technical queries from less experienced members of the team, encouraging a knowledge sharing culture and mentoring when appropriate

• Oversee IT Networking installations, attending site as required - which may include foreign travel

• Review and maintain technical documentation relevant to networking systems, ensuring that they are up to date and that the procedures are easy for the IT Service Desk to follow

• Deputise for the Network Service Owner at meetings when the need arises

• Assist with any other technical activities related to the businesses IT Network as required

• Input into problem and root cause analysis reports as requested by the Problem Manager

• Review incident statistic reports and implement plans to reduce frequently occurring incidents

• Monitor the capacity of Network Systems and produce reports for the Network Service Owner to aid with purchasing additional capacity

Experience & Knowledge

Essential

• An in-depth knowledge of Cisco routing (ISR / Catalyst / Meraki), switching (DNAC / ACI) and Firewalling (Firepower).

• Experience of Fortinet technologies including FortiGate Firewalls, FortiAnalyzer and FortiManager.

• Experience of supporting large complex WAN’s including those which use OSPF, EIGRP and BGP

• Experience of supporting large complex LAN environments (LACP, MSTP, VRRP / HSRP)

• Experience of configuring and supporting VPN networks (RA VPN, L2L, DMVPN,)

• Ability to relate business requirements to technical solutions

• Strong analytical skills to quickly and accurately respond to re-active problems ensuring that the most appropriate course of action is taken

• Experience of working in an ITIL environment, understanding how the end to end processes work across the organisation

Preferable

• Exposure to Aruba wireless and LAN switches.

• Experience of Zscaler technologies (ZIA, ZPA, ZCC, ZDX)

• Exposure to SD WAN technologies.

Skills / Behaviours

Essential

• Relevant Cisco/Aruba/Fortinet qualifications or equivalent experience.

• Ability to write technical documents in a way that is easy for less technical individuals to understand

• Strong problem-solving skills that have been acquired within an IT environment

• Excellent interpersonal, communication, negotiation and presentation skills, both verbal and written

• Ability to plan, coordinate and prioritise different activities

• Ability to work well under pressure, ensuring a structured approach is maintained at all times

• Ability to liaise with, and relate to, a broad spectrum of individuals

Preferable

• Ability to quickly develop new skills, and adapt to new technology

• Ability to use a variety of methods to share knowledge and coach less experienced team members

• A keen interest in following developments within the IT industry

We know our colleagues work tirelessly to make JD Sports the success it is today and in turn, we offer them some amazing benefits including staff Discount On JD Group and other brands within the organisation and personal development opportunities to learn and develop at work.

Thank you for your time

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