Role Summary:

A Network Architect is responsible for designing and governing network architecture that supports business services. This includes translating requirements into scalable, secure, and resilient designs, and making informed trade-off decisions across cost, risk, and performance.

Core Responsibilities:

Architecture and Design:

- Design enterprise network architecture across data center, WAN, cloud, and hybrid environments

- Define standards, patterns, and reference architectures

- Ensure scalability, resiliency, and security by design

Trade-off and Decision Making:

- Balance performance, cost, risk, and operability

- Evaluate competing approaches (e.g., overlay vs underlay, vendor vs open solutions)

- Make design decisions at the system level rather than the device level

Vendor and Technology Neutrality:

- Evaluate technologies across multiple vendors (e.g., Cisco, VMware, Juniper) and open-source

- Avoid designing around a single vendor's constraints or bias

- Select solutions based on best architectural fit

Complex Programme Delivery:

- Lead architecture across large, multi-domain programmes

- Collaborate with infrastructure, security, cloud, and application teams

- Own end-to-end design coherence rather than isolated components

Stakeholder Management:

- Align stakeholders across security, operations, business, and vendors

- Manage conflicting requirements such as security vs usability, cost vs resiliency, and speed vs governance

Governance and Standards:

- Define and enforce network standards

- Review designs to ensure alignment with architectural principles

Required Skills:

Technical:

- Routing and protocols: BGP (mandatory), OSPF, TCP/IP

- Data center networking and fabric design

- Network security principles (e.g., segmentation, access control)

- Software-defined networking (e.g., NSX)

- VXLAN and overlay networking

- Hybrid cloud networking

- Network automation (e.g., Python, APIs)

- Strong Linux and networking integration

- Experience with containers and infrastructure tooling

Experience:

- Proven delivery of complex, enterprise-scale projects

- Experience with high availability and disaster recovery designs, multi-region and data center interconnects, and secure access models

Soft Skills:

- Strong ability to articulate trade-offs

- Confidence in constructively challenging stakeholders

- Clear communication across both technical and non-technical audiences

- Ability to drive decisions