Senior Network Patch Engineer — Hybrid London

HCLTech; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Vacation allowance

Insurance (Term life, business travel)

Job summary

HCLTech in London seeks a Senior Patch Management Engineer to own firmware and software lifecycle across a multi-vendor network estate, including routers, switches, firewalls, and wireless devices. You will assess advisories, prioritise CVEs, and lead automated patch workflows and maintenance windows.

You will collaborate with security and NOC teams, develop runbooks, validate patches, and ensure patch compliance while maintaining network stability and high service levels.

Qualifications

• Experience leading patching of multi-vendor networks.
• Ability to map CVEs to upgrades and prioritise by impact.
• Develop and maintain patch runbooks and validation checks.
• Ability to integrate vulnerability feeds into patching workflows.

Responsibilities

• Manage firmware/software lifecycle for routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, wireless controllers across multi-vendor environments.
• Assess advisories (PSIRT/JSA) and map CVEs to upgrades; prioritise by CVSS and business impact.
• Develop and maintain device-specific patching runbooks with pre-checks, upgrades, rollbacks, post-validation.
• Automate patch workflows using Ansible, Netmiko, NAPALM or vendor APIs.
• Lead maintenance window planning including CAB submission and rollback testing.
• Ensure backup integrity before patching (RANCID/Oxidised/Cisco NSO) and perform structured rollbacks.
• Incorporate Qualys/Tenable vulnerability data into prioritisation.
• Monitor post-patching network stability with NMS/IPAM tools.
• Act as L2 escalation for patch-related issues and routing incidents.
• Produce patch compliance reports for management and security teams.
• Drive SLA adherence: Critical within 72h, High within 14 days.

Skills

Risk assessment

Planning

Communication

Documentation

Vendor advisories awareness

Education

CCNP Enterprise or Security (Cert)

JNCIP-ENT or JNCIP-SEC (Cert)

PCNSE (Cert)

Security+ or CySA+ (Cert)

ITIL 4 Foundation/Managing Professional (Cert)

Tools

Ansible

Netmiko

NAPALM

Python (Paramiko)

Cisco DNA Centre

SolarWinds

NetBrain

Infoblox

Cisco NSO

Viptela/SD-WAN

Job description

HCLTech in London seeks a Senior Patch Management Engineer to own firmware and software lifecycle across a multi-vendor network estate, including routers, switches, firewalls, and wireless devices. You will assess advisories, prioritise CVEs, and lead automated patch workflows and maintenance windows.

You will collaborate with security and NOC teams, develop runbooks, validate patches, and ensure patch compliance while maintaining network stability and high service levels.