Network Engineer

OpticoreIT; Manchester; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 60,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

23 days holiday + bank holidays

Private healthcare & dental

Pension

EV car, cycle-to-work schemes

Team & Company Social events

EMI share scheme

Job summary

Opticore IT is seeking a Network Engineer in Manchester with CCNA-level routing and switching expertise. You will be the on-site contact for users and regional teams, handling incidents and small projects across multiple sites including Leeds and Preston.

The role requires strong core networking skills, incident response discipline, and willingness to travel. Company offers training, benefits, and discretionary bonus with substantial holiday entitlement.

Qualifications

• Cisco Routing & Switching and core networking fundamentals with TCP/IP, VLANs and VPN.
• Incident response and change-management discipline across incidents of any severity.
• Full UK driving licence and own car due to travel requirements.
• Hands-on site engineering with multi-site coverage including rack work.
• Willingness to consume existing automation and tooling (no coding required).

Responsibilities

• Provide network incident support across the full severity spectrum and outages.
• Coordinate incident response across teams and keep stakeholders informed.
• Resolve service requests to grant appropriate network access per role.
• Follow change procedures for access or configuration changes and document.
• Deliver small in-region projects such as stack expansions and capacity upgrades.
• Perform physical infrastructure work including cabling, tracing and moving equipment.
• Act as on-the-ground interface between northern sites and central networks.
• Cover Leeds and Manchester sites at least one day per week and other regional locations.
• Engage with existing network tooling and automation in day-to-day work.
• Engage with Juniper Mist, Palo Alto and Zscaler where relevant.

Skills

Cisco Routing & Switching

Core Networking

Incident Response

Change Management

Driving Licence

Site Engineering

Multi-Site Coverage

Network Automation

Job description

Opticore IT is a specialist Network Engineer and Project Management consultancy offering a wide variety of opportunities to work within fast-paced, challenging environments across our client base spanning multiple sectors including Finance, Broadcast Media, Telecommunications and more.

Opticore IT are currently searching for a Network Engineer who is operating at CCNA level with strong general routing and switching knowledge. You'll join our excelling team, in a position based in Manchester, with travel to other Northern sites, this opportunity will be predominantly on site.

You will act as the trusted on-site point of contact for users, local teams and the central networks function, handling the full incident spectrum from single-user issues to major outages, resolving service requests within change governance, and delivering small in-region projects.

What you'll be doing:

• Provide network incident support across the full severity spectrum, from single-user connectivity issues to major and global outages, diagnosing, troubleshooting and resolving connectivity problems.
• Coordinate incident response across teams when multiple users or critical services are affected, keeping stakeholders informed and driving issues through to resolution.
• Resolve service requests to give users the appropriate level of network access for their role, balancing responsiveness with governance.
• Follow company change procedures rigorously when making access or configuration changes, ensuring every change is properly reviewed, approved and documented.
• Deliver small in-region projects such as stack expansions and capacity upgrades.
• Perform physical infrastructure work including cabling, tracing and moving equipment.
• Serve as the on-the-ground interface between northern site teams and the central networks function, offering face-to-face support and building strong working relationships.
• Cover both Leeds and Manchester primary sites (minimum one day per week per site) plus additional regional locations including Preston and other locations.
• Apply automation within day-to-day work by consuming existing tooling, rather than authoring automation code or pipelines.
• Engage with the Juniper Mist, Palo Alto and Zscaler estate where relevant to in-region work.

What you'll bring:

• Cisco Routing & Switching + Core Networking Fundamentals - Solid grip on TCP/IP, routing, switching, VLANs, DNS, DHCP and VPN. Independent ownership of complex trouble tickets requiring testing, plus end-to-end delivery of in-region projects such as stack expansions and capacity upgrades.
• Incident Response & Change Management Discipline - Handles incidents across the full severity spectrum, from single-user issues to major outages. Keeps stakeholders informed, drives to resolution, and follows change procedures for every access or configuration change.
• Full UK Driving Licence & Own Car - due to travel required for this role.
• Hands-On Site Engineering & Multi-Site Coverage - Physical rack work (cabling, tracing, moving kit) combined with comfort operating across a distributed estate
• Network Automation (Consumer Level) - Happy to consume existing automation and tooling in day-to-day work, does not involve authoring automation code or building CI/CD pipelines.

What you’ll gain:

Here at OpticoreIT we believe in investing in our team as we understand that we are only as great as our engineers, so learning and development is a big deal for us. Whether you’re going for a CCNP, CCIE, Hashicorp, Python, Cloud Technology or anything in between OpticoreIT has your back with all our training, labs, courses, and shared knowledge and the most important part it’s all free! On top of that, we also give you:

• Competitive Salary & discretionary bonus
• 23 days holiday + bank holidays
• Private healthcare & dental
• Pension
• EV car, workplace nursery, tech, and cycle-to-work salary sacrifice schemes
• Team & Company Social events
• EMI share scheme