3rd Line Network Engineer

LIMA; Salford; Hybrid; GBP 52,000 - 76,000; Full time

Job summary

LIMA in Salford is recruiting a 3rd Line Network Engineer to join the Service Desk. You will own escalated incidents, investigate to root cause, and drive changes through CAB while continuously improving managed services.

You will mentor juniors, document solutions for reuse, and participate in on-call rotations to support customers beyond standard hours.

Qualifications

• Extensive hands-on experience supporting enterprise networks (Palo Alto, Cisco, Juniper) across multi-site environments.
• Experience with network monitoring and observability tools.
• Strong documentation and network diagramming skills.
• CCNP, PCNSE or equivalent vendor certification.
• Advanced troubleshooting across WAN/LAN, VPNs and SD-WAN.
• Experience with ITIL-aligned service desks and incident handling.

Responsibilities

• Manage incidents from customers and hosted environments, resolving issues efficiently.
• Update incident progress with customers and stakeholders in line with SLA.
• Act as technical escalation point, translating complex tech for non-technical audiences.
• Identify repeat issues and root cause under problem records.
• Support release management processes, including planning and documentation.
• Contribute to on-call rota, 1-week-in-4, outside core hours.
• Seek proactive improvements to operational efficiency.
• Create and review documentation and knowledge base articles.

Skills

Palo Alto

Cisco

Juniper

Network troubleshooting

ITIL processes

Technical communication

Escalation handling

Education

CCNP

PCNSE

Equivalent vendor certification

ITIL Foundation

Tools

LogicMonitor

SolarWinds

NetFlow

Job description

We’re hiring for a 3rd Line Network Engineer to join our Service Desk team.You will play a key role in supporting, maintaining and improving complex customer network environments. You will take ownership of escalated incidents, lead technical investigation through to resolution, identify root cause through problem management, present and deliver approved changes through CAB, and contribute to continual service improvement across our managed services.

You will act as a senior escalation point for the Network team, combining strong technical judgement with clear customer communication. The role requires the ability to work independently, document solutions for future use, support less-experienced colleagues, and maintain high standards of ownership from initial investigation through to resolution.

We operate on a hybrid working basis, with employees required to work from our Salford Quays office Monday to Wednesday each week.

Day to day you will:

• Manage incidents from customers and LIMA’s hosted environment on a priority basis and provide the highest standards of professionalism and skill, in order to resolve customer issues efficiently and accurately.
• Ensure customers and involved parties are updated with their incident progress either by phone or by using ConnectWise Manage (Our service desk ITSM application) in a timely manner in alignment with SLA’s.
• Act as a knowledgeable point of technical escalation, with the ability to break down technical information into clear communications for non/less-technical parties.
• Identify repeat issues and/or duplicated alerts, and work toward finding the true root cause under a problem record.
• Support our customers through planned release management processes (in and out of core hours where required) by planning, preparing, conducting, and documenting the process.
• Align to the On-Call rota as an escalation engineer that will support LIMA customers outside of standard business hours and weekends in a 1-week-in-4 rota.
• Remain forward-looking, seeking opportunity to streamline operations by shifting to proactive over reactive approaches to resolution.
• Adhere to LIMA’s operational SLA/KPI metrics, setting the standard for junior members of the service desk.
• Create, peer-review, and identify missing pieces of documentation and/or knowledge base articles.

What skills and experience will help you succeed?

• Extensive hands-on experience supporting, troubleshooting and improving enterprise networking platforms such as Palo Alto, Cisco and Juniper across complex customer or multi-site environments.
• Rich working experience with network monitoring and observability tools such as LogicMonitor, SolarWinds and NetFlow, including alert tuning, threshold review, root cause investigation and proactive service improvement.
• Strong documentation and network diagramming skills, with the ability to create clear technical records, peer-review existing documentation, identify knowledge gaps and produce reusable guidance for other engineers.
• Have hands on experience in configuring and troubleshooting VPC, VDC, STP, BGP, OSPF and other key mainstream protocols.
• CCNP, PCNSE, or equivalent senior-level vendor certification, or demonstrable experience operating at this level across enterprise network environments.
• Advanced troubleshooting experience across WAN and LAN technologies, including VPNs, SD-WAN, routing, switching, wireless connectivity, latency, packet loss and intermittent performance issues.
• Self-motivated with excellent time management skills and the ability to prioritise competing incidents, changes, documentation and improvement activity without losing ownership of customer outcomes.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to communicate at all levels.
• Strong experience working within ITIL-aligned service departments, including incident, problem, change and release management processes in a customer-focused managed services environment.

It would advantageous if you:

• Hold certifications in the aforementioned technologies
• Have operational experience with NSX-T or other software-defined networking
• Are certified to ITIL Foundation or higher
• Can demonstrate experience delivering backup and disaster recovery planning, testing and improvements

About LIMA

At LIMA, we help organisations achieve their ambitions through insight-led technology strategy and managed services that enhance resilience, drive performance, and support sustainable growth. But we know that our success is powered by our people.

We’re proud to be a Great Place to Work company for the second year running, and our team consistently tells us that the people are the best thing about working here. We recognise and reward the hard work of our colleagues with competitive salaries, professional development opportunities, wellbeing support and a strong benefits package.