Role: Senior Network Engineer
Location: Knutsford, Cheshire - Hybrid 2-3 days onsite
Duration: 9 months
Rate: £350-400 per day - Outside IR35/Limited Company
Standard hours: Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm
Role
Are you a Senior Network Engineer ready to go beyond day-to-day operations and make a lasting impact on enterprise network infrastructure? This is your opportunity to transition into a more strategic, architecture-focused role - where your technical expertise will contribute to the high and low level design of a global network transformation programme.
As Senior Network Engineer, you must possess strong MPLS, WAN, MAN and VPN expertise (commercial experience of VPN over MPLS is essential).
You will be auditing, documenting and analysing the existing MPLS environment and then acting as a technical advocate during a MPLS to SD-WAN/SASE migration.
This is not a hands-on configuration role, but a discovery, documentation, traffic analysis and design adjudication role.
Responsibilities
* Perform passive network discovery and audit of a MPLS environment
* Build and document network topology, configuration and traffic maps
* Estimate and validate QoS/CoS policies through traffic analysis
* Review and technically challenge high and low-level designs
* Provide expert input on MPLS, VPN, SD-WAN and SASE for design reviews
* Support the Project Manager with risk identification and continuity planning
Skills & Experience
* Proven experience in MPLS (Layer 3 VPN, label switching), WAN/MAN, VPNs
* Experience of VPN over MPLS
* Ability to audit networks where direct config access is limited
* Strong knowledge of traffic analysis, QoS/CoS, and topology mapping
* Familiarity with Fortinet SD-WAN and SASE concepts
* Experience in large-scale enterprise/global networks
* Strong documentation and stakeholder engagement skills