About Us:

Our support services help the whole council work to the best of their ability. They include the Council's Customer Access department, Human Resources, IT, Financial Management, Corporate Property, Audit, Fraud, Risk and Insurance.

We aim for excellence in these services as they will in turn benefit the community we serve. Please take a look at our current vacancies.

The Role:

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) and Westminster City Council (WCC) have a shared IT department serving over 6,000 staff. 

Having recently refreshed the IT Strategy we are making a major investment in modernising and unifying our network across both Councils and our two housing management services. We are planning our transition to a single networks provision and consolidated support model over the course of 2020/21.

We are looking for an experienced Senior Networks Support Engineer to provide up to date, in-depth technical expertise and to work with the Networks Team Manager, business stakeholders, third parties and the team to implement and support this major strategic change. 

The management of the data network for WCC is currently outsourced to Virgin Media Business (VMB) using primarily Cisco equipment, whereas RBKC has an in-house model using Juniper networks & Aruba. To allow the RBKC Team to take on the support of the WCC environment in 2020, there is an element of upskilling for the existing team required. Additionally, they will require a documented comprehensive view of the overall architecture and locations of assets. 

The Council’s recently award VMB with the contract to replace the legacy WAN Infrastructure with SDWAN, using Versa technologies, aligning with the strategy of Internet First. This contract includes the cloud provision of a 3rd 

Party Landing Zone, Azure gateway and IPAM. This will start to be rolled out in the coming months.   

In addition, the in-house team from April 2020 will support four telephony/contact centre platforms across the Councils. The strategy is to firstly simplify and where possible consolidate, with a view to moving towards a single cloud solution by 2021. Microsoft Teams is already in use as the councils’ primary collaboration tool and most likely will form basis of the future telephony platform. 

Please refer to the Job Description for more information. 

About You:

What’s important to us?

•    You are from a data and voice networking  background and put your clients at the heart of what you deliver
•    You have an in-depth and thorough understanding of many aspects of networking
•    Knowledge of SDWAN, HP/Aruba, Cisco and Juniper would be highly beneficial.

Role Requirements:

Key Responsibilities:

•    Help deliver strong IT Service Availability and Performance
•    Take ownership and manage your network related service desk tickets, ensuring tickets are processed efficiently and effectively as per service desk process 
•    Interpretation and implementation of BAU changes 
•    Maintenance of ongoing compliance and key controls such as threat monitoring, rule-base reviews and network device/firewall firmware patching 
•    DNS administration and IP Address management
•    Strong customer focus, displaying an understanding of what excellent internal and external customer service entails, with a ‘can do' attitude 
•    Ability to work flexibly in a fast moving, pressured and changing environment. You will need to meet tight deadlines, at times under pressure to restore service to our customers 

Requirements:

•    Network engineering background with a heavy focus on SLA’s, security, firewall maintenance and Wireless LAN. Providing 2nd line support 

•    To carry out the full range of defined tasks associated with operating and controlling installed hardware and software. This may involve the use of multiple hardware and software platforms, and both local and wide area networks

•    To investigate and diagnose complex network problems, working with users, other staff and suppliers as appropriate.

•    To select appropriate standard procedures and tools, and ensures that defined tasks associated with the planning, installation, upgrade, operation, control and maintenance of local and wide area networks for communication of any form of digital data are carried out.

•    To supervise all installation and maintenance work associated with the installation as a whole, including network changes and maintenance routines, environmental and electrical services utilising the appropriate tools and test equipment and ensure  that procedures are followed, particularly those relating to safety and security.

We work in partnership with Hampshire County Council (HCC) who deliver many transactional services on our behalf. Although most communications will be from HCC, all selection and appointment decisions will be made by RBKC. Certain services are shared across more than one Council area to nearby neighbouring Authorities. This enhances delivery and reduces costs. Your recruitment information will advise if your remit extends beyond RBKC.

We will primarily contact candidates by e-mail throughout the recruitment process, please monitor your email junk / spam folder as our system generated emails may be allocated to these folders by your email settings.

We engage our staff with a variety of learning types including face-to-face and virtual learning because we want to ensure our staff understand our values and behaviours, grow their skills and develop their careers.

Additional information

RBKC is currently inclusively reviewing its pay, reward and benefits framework.

This post is covered by the Fluency Duty, as outlined in the Code of Practice on the English language requirements for public sector workers.

We are committed to promoting equality and respecting diversity and welcome applications from all sections of the community.

We are a Disability Confident Employer – committed to ensuring that our recruitment and selection process is inclusive and accessible.