📍 Location: Newbury - Hybrid, 1-2 days per week onsite
⏳ Contract: 6 months rolling
🔐 Security Clearance: Active or eligible for UK SC Clearance
💷 Rate: £500-£600 per day, inside IR35
We are looking for an experienced Senior Networking & Security Specialist / Technical Lead to join a high-level technical delivery team, leading the design and hands-on implementation of complex, multi-vendor network and security solutions across enterprise environments.
This is a hands-on role combining technical leadership, solution design, implementation and stakeholder engagement.
🔧 Key Responsibilities
Lead the design and implementation of complex network and security solutions across greenfield and brownfield environments
Produce high-quality HLDs, LLDs, implementation plans and operational runbooks
Perform design validation, PoC testing and pre/post-implementation verification
Configure, deploy and optimise network and security infrastructure
Diagnose and resolve complex network and security incidents
Conduct technical assessments and capacity planning
Act as the primary technical point of contact for project stakeholders
Present technical designs and implementation strategies to technical and non-technical audiences
Coordinate engineers and technicians, providing technical leadership and mentoring
Work closely with project managers, solution architects, client teams and operations throughout the project lifecycle
💻 Technical Experience Required
We're particularly interested in candidates with strong experience across:
Networking
Advanced routing & switching
BGP, OSPF, IS-IS and EIGRP
VLAN, STP/RSTP/MSTP, vPC/LACP and QoS
VXLAN, GRE and IPsec
Enterprise and service-provider environments
Cisco ACI, including spine-leaf architecture and multi-pod/multi-siteNetwork Security
Next-Generation Firewall design and implementation
IPsec, SSL/TLS and SD-WAN security
Security policy and lifecycle management
Compliance-aligned network securityApplication Delivery
L4/L7 load balancing
SSL offloading
Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB)
High-availability architecturesVendor Technologies
Cisco IOS/IOS-XE/IOS-XR/NX-OS, ASA, Firepower, ISE, Catalyst Centre and ACI
Juniper JunOS and SRX
Fortinet FortiOS, FortiGate, FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer
F5 BIG-IP LTM/GTM/ASM/APM and iRules
⭐ Desirable
Network automation experience using Python and/or Ansible
Experience integrating network platforms via REST/NETCONF/RESTCONF/gRPC APIs
Professional-level networking certifications such as CCIE, JNCIE or equivalent
Cisco DevNet certification
👤 What We're Looking For
You'll need to be a confident technical lead who can take ownership of complex deliverables, communicate technical concepts clearly, solve problems under pressure and work effectively with both technical and business stakeholders.
If you're an experienced Network & Security Specialist looking for your next contract opportunity in a technically challenging environment, we'd love to hear from you.
📩 Interested? Apply now or send over your latest CV for consideration.
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Salary description
£500.00 - £600.00 per day