Senior Network Engineer

OpticoreIT; Greater London; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Discretionary bonus

23 days holiday + bank holidays

Private healthcare

Pension

EV car scheme

Cycle-to-work scheme

Social events

EMI share scheme

Job summary

Opticore IT is seeking a Senior Network Engineer to join our London-area team with 2 days on site. You will design and deploy Layer 2 edge switching, Meraki-based SD-WAN, and enterprise wireless across a large estate, coordinating with cross-functional teams and the automation group.

The role requires deep Cisco Catalyst experience, Meraki full stack expertise, and knowledge of ISE/RADIUS. Occasional travel to multiple sites 1–2 times per month is expected.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience with Cisco Catalyst 9000 Edge Switching and Meraki Full stack.
• Experience with Meraki/Juniper Mist wireless tools.
• Experience with Cisco ISE and RADIUS authentication.
• Willingness to travel 1-2 times per month.
• Ability to design and deploy VLANs, 802.1X, and NAC policies.

Responsibilities

• Design and deploy Layer 2 edge switching stacks at retained sites.
• Deliver edge switching for production distribution and media/storage infra.
• Deploy Meraki MX SD-WAN, MS, MR across sites and manage dashboards.
• Configure wireless with Meraki or Juniper Mist and migrate SSIDs and policies.
• Configure 802.1X and NAC policies with directory services.
• Collaborate with CI/CD pipelines and cross-functional teams.

Skills

Cisco Catalyst Edge Switching

Meraki Full stack

Wireless networking

Network Access Control (ISE)

Network design & troubleshooting

Tools

Meraki Dashboard

Juniper Mist

Cisco ISE

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 Senior Network Engineers with strong experience working with Cisco Catalyst Edge Switching & in Meraki Full stack environments. You'll join our excelling team, based in the London area with 2 days a week on site.

A bit about the opportunity:

Deliver site-level Layer 2 access, distribution switching, wireless, and NAC infrastructure across a large estate of office, production, and broadcast environments as part of a corporate divestiture programme, ensuring retained-entity sites have clean, independent access infrastructure ahead of Day 1.

What you'll be doing:

• Design and deploy Layer 2 edge switching stacks at retained-entity sites, aligned to new VLAN, addressing, and uplink designs
• Deliver edge switching for production distribution environments including media production (Avid/Nexus digital media), storage (Isilon/NAS), and transcoding infrastructure
• Deploy and migrate Meraki MX SD-WAN appliances, MS switches, and MR wireless access points across retained-entity sites, managing Dashboard templates for multi-site standardisation
• Deploy and configure wireless infrastructure using Meraki or Juniper Mist platforms, and migrate SSIDs, RADIUS authentication, and wireless policies to new identity services
• Configure 802.1X wired and wireless authentication and NAC policies (e.g. Cisco ISE) integrated with directory services
• Remove retained-entity VLANs, SVIs, and access policies from divested-entity edge switches and reconfigure uplinks to align with divested core routing
• Deliver changes via CI/CD pipelines in collaboration with the automation and tooling team
• Coordinate with the core routing team on uplink design and L3 boundary placement
• Coordinate with the identity team on 802.1X, RADIUS, NAC policy separation, and group configuration
• Produce low-level designs, technical working papers, and decision records, and participate in design assurance reviews

What you'll bring:

• Extensive experience with Cisco Catalyst 9000 Edge Switching - C2900/9300/9500 configuration and deployment, VLAN design, trunking, EtherChannel/port-channel, RSTP/MST, stacking, HA, and resilient access layer design.
• Strong background with Meraki Full stack (MX,MS,MR) - MX for SD-WAN, MS for LAN & MR for enterprise wireless (SSIDs, Group Policies, RF profiles). Dashboard, template-based multi-site deployment, and site migration experience.
• Working knowledge of Enterprise Wireless tools - Meraki and/or Juniper Mist. SSID design, RF planning, roaming, WPA2/3-Enterprise. RADIUS integration for wireless authentication.
• Experience with Network Access Controls (Cisco ISE) - 802.1x wired & wireless authentication. MAB fallback, VLAN assignment, guest access, profiling, posture assessment, RADIUS/TACACS+ integration patterns.
• Ability to travel to different sites (away from base London office), 1-2 times per month.

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