Salary: Up to £55,000 per annum negotiable depending on experience + fantastic benefits!

Jisc grade: TNE3 (internal use only)

Hours: 35 hours per week

Contract: Permanent

Reports into: Lead security architect (Core systems)

Location: Hybrid - A blend of working from home and your nominated hub office, we have hubs in London, Bristol, Manchester and Oxford. Specific patterns for working in the office are not mandated, and the frequency of time worked in the office is agreed with your manager. Meeting in person is something we value so you may need to travel on occasion to any of our hub offices.

About the role:

Jisc's security division, protects UK Education and Research against a wide range of cyber security threats, supporting our members and customers in improving their digital resilience.

This new and exciting role is part of the architecture and engineering group, a dedicated team responsible for managing and maintaining the critical systems that Jisc relies upon to deliver top-notch cyber security services to its customers. This dynamic position involves a blend of strategic planning, hands-on implementation, and proactive problem-solving to ensure the robustness and reliability of our cyber security infrastructure.

A typical day in the role:

• Implementing Configuration Changes: Making adjustments to key network infrastructure within a mixed physical/virtual datacentre LAN across multiple sites.
• Enhancing Monitoring Systems: Contributing to improvements in our monitoring systems and using them proactively to identify and resolve potential faults before they cause outages.
• Developing Automation: Advancing our CI/CD-driven automation by integrating additional systems and implementing new features.
• Design and Planning: Planning and designing hardware refreshes, improvements to redundancy and reliability, and structural changes to the datacentres.
• Preventative Maintenance: Preparing and testing upgrades and other preventative maintenance tasks.
• Customer Support: Responding to customer tickets and queries from team members, assisting with troubleshooting as needed.

Other key responsibilities and deliverables:

• Operation of the firewalls, switching and routing underpinning Jisc’s security services both manually through the CLI and through our CI/CD driven automation.
• Implementing configuration changes both at customer direction and for proactive improvements while adhering to change control processes.
• Preparing and executing plans for preventative maintenance and validating redundancy, backup, and disaster recovery capabilities
• Monitoring the health of the datacentre networks for both potential faults and optimisations, as well as contributing improvements to our monitoring systems

Key Skills and Experience:

• Extensive experience in enterprise network administration.
• Solid understanding of core protocols and technologies adjacent to the network – including Netflow, DHCP, NTP, RADIUS, and NTP.
• Proficient at operating network equipment via a CLI.
• Experience using recent versions of JunOS (21.4+) or demonstrable experience working in a multivendor environment
• Previous experience of an implementing network automation using Ansible, or comparable experience in another framework
• Fluency in one or more scripting languages, such as Python.
• Security mindset – continually evaluating the impact that changes have on the security of our systems, and how the risks can be mitigated.
• Self-motivation – proactively identify new systems or technologies that could be deployed, potential faults, and optimisations.

Nice to haves:

• We use BGP, OSPFv3, MACSec, IKE/IPSec, and IPv6 extensively – operational experience with these is desirable
• Our automation is driven from git with CI/CD – any previous experience of using git would be advantageous, as would knowledge or experience of Gitlab’s CI/CD functionality
• Most of the systems using the datacentre LAN run Red Hat Enterprise Linux on vSphere – working with these in the past will be beneficial
• Any experience working within the scope of standards such as ITIL, ISO9001, ISO27001, Cyber Essentials, and the CIS Benchmark would be an asset.

DBS required or enhanced background screening: This position requires the successful candidate to undergo enhanced background screening checks, which include but is not limited to:

• Basic / Enhanced UK criminal record check
• Credit check
• International fraud and sanctions

Don’t meet every single requirement?

We know that sometimes people can be put off applying for a job if they think they can’t tick every box, so we encourage you to apply even if you do not meet 100% of the requirements, but you feel this role is perfect for you. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles!

Why work for us?

At Jisc, everyone plays a key role and gets the chance to feel part of it, that to us is the definition of a meaningful career. We want to create a culture of lifelong learning. You can look forward to a rewarding job with opportunities to develop and make a real difference to the education and research sectors.

We believe a balance between your personal and professional life is essential to your happiness and fulfilment. We work flexibly at Jisc and focus on outputs rather than presenteeism and are open to a whole range of ways of working.

It isn’t about how many hours you spend at home or at work; it’s about the flow you establish that brings energy to both parts of your life. Our hybrid working policy is flexible, and the frequency of time spent in your nominated office will vary across teams and job roles.

Take a look at our fantastic benefits! We offer:

• Flexible work pattern, which can adapt to suit your schedules and personal commitments
• 31 days annual leave (plus bank holidays) that includes an additional three closure days over Christmas plus the opportunity to buy up to an additional 5 days
• Generous flexible pension schemes
• Protection benefit – life cover
• Annual Jisc performance award
• A range of wellbeing lifestyle benefits including company paid health care cash plan, employee assistance programme, mental health first aiders and support
• A generous budget to support you with external learning and continuous professional development
• Allocated allowance of up to £250 to equip your home office
• Financial well-being support including access to preferential loan and savings plans, mortgage advice, will writing tools and support and resources to help you make the most of your money
• The opportunity to donate to charity tax-free with our Payroll Giving benefit
• Electric Car Lease Scheme and option to purchase SmartTech – spreading the cost of your everyday white goods and technology
• A wide range of discounts from retailers and big-name high-street stores and CSSC membership
• Family friendly policies including enhanced parental, maternity and paternity leave and opportunity for career breaks
• Support your volunteering with up to 3 days volunteer leave
• Cycle to work scheme and eye care scheme including free eye test vouchers and £70 towards new glasses for VDU use
• Free flu vaccinations
• Employee recognition awards and travel loans
• A company culture which supports and promotes personal learning and development, including access to thousands of courses on LinkedIn Learning

Equity, diversity and inclusion:

At Jisc, we don’t look for ‘sameness’, but to truly include people who can add unique perspectives and experiences to our culture, and we are working hard to achieve progressive change. ‘Always inclusive’ is one of our six guiding principles which actively encourages us to bring our whole authentic selves to work. We believe that our commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion is fundamental to our success.

Jisc believes our people make all the difference in cultivating an inclusive culture that welcomes ideas, encourages innovation, and values belonging. We work with passionate colleagues to strengthen knowledge and awareness, provide learning and development opportunities, and foster multiple employee networks which create a sense of community and influence our policies and practice.

We work hard to create an equitable experience for our candidates and workforce which embraces all aspects of their identity including race and ethnicity, religion and belief, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, trans identities, age, class, disability, neurodivergence, or veteran status.

Application process:

We want you to showcase your talent throughout the recruitment process. Please let us know how we can best support you to do that; for example, if there are any reasonable adjustments we may be able to put in place. We will be happy to help you.

Just so you know, we review CVs as soon as we can and aim to provide an update on your application within 4 weeks of receiving it. However, you may hear from us a lot sooner, so please keep an eye out for our emails or calls!

Jisc has an active sponsor licence to recruit on a Skilled worker visa basis. Candidates wishing to apply who require sponsorship should determine the likelihood of obtaining a Certificate of Sponsorship for the role by assessing their circumstances against the relevant Home Office criteria. Jisc does not offer any financial re-imbursement towards the applicant costs, such as re-location, skilled worker visa and dependant costs or the immigration health charge.

No agencies please.