VP, Network Site Reliability Engineering Architect

SMBC Group; Singapore; On-site; SGD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

SMBC Group in Singapore seeks a Senior Network Architect to define target-state architectures across data centres, campus, WAN/SD‑WAN, cloud connectivity, wireless and security. You will lead design reviews, set standards, and govern lifecycle roadmaps for reliable, scalable network services.

You will drive automation and IaC, establish telemetry and SLOs, and own reliability reporting, partnering with regional NOC, security, and vendor teams to ensure compliant, resilient solutions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Telecommunications, or a related discipline.
• 8–12 years of experience in network architecture, engineering, or SRE in complex enterprise environments.
• Experience designing resilient data centre, campus, WAN/SD‑WAN, Internet, cloud connectivity, wireless, and network-security solutions.
• Strong knowledge of routing, switching, BGP, OSPF, QoS, VPNs, and high availability.
• Hands-on automation using Python, Ansible, REST APIs, Git, and IaC tooling.
• Experience with observability, telemetry, dashboards, SLIs/SLOs, and capacity planning.
• Experience with Cisco, Palo Alto, Fortinet, F5, Meraki, and related platforms.
• Banking/regulated environments knowledge or exposure is advantageous.
• Certifications in CCNP/CCIE, security or cloud-networking, Python/Ansible, SRE/DevOps, ITIL are a plus.

Responsibilities

• Define target-state architectures for APAC network services including data centres, campus, branch, WAN/SD‑WAN, Internet gateways, cloud connectivity, wireless, and security.
• Govern high-level and low-level designs, standards, configuration baselines, and lifecycle roadmaps.
• Lead design reviews and provide engineering assurance for projects, migrations, and new site onboarding.
• Define and measure SLOs, reliability KPIs, dashboards, and alerting; own reliability reporting and drive improvements.
• Develop automation and IaC patterns; enable closed-loop remediation with security controls.
• Perform capacity planning, optimize routing and network performance, and drive scalable, resilient architectures.
• Mentor engineers, create reusable templates, and collaborate with vendors and internal stakeholders.

Skills

Network architecture

Automation

Observability

SRE practices

Vendor & stakeholder management

Troubleshooting & RCA

Security governance

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Telecommunications, or related discipline

Tools

Python

Ansible

REST APIs

Git

JSON/YAML

IaC/Orchestration

Job description

Key Responsibilities

A. Network Architecture & Design Authority

• Define target-state and reference architectures for APAC network services, covering data centre, campus, branch, WAN/SD-WAN, Internet gateways, cloud connectivity, wireless, remote access, network security, load balancing, and core network services.
• Produce and govern high-level and low-level designs, engineering standards, approved technology patterns, configuration baselines, and lifecycle roadmaps.
• Lead design reviews and provide technical assurance for strategic projects, major changes, new site onboarding, technology refresh, migrations, and service introductions.
• Ensure designs address availability, scalability, security, operability, capacity, disaster recovery, regulatory requirements, and support-model readiness from inception.

B. Instrumentation, Observability & SLOs

• Define network SLIs, SLOs, error budgets, reliability KPIs, and service-health measures for critical connectivity and security services.
• Architect end-to-end telemetry across network devices, controllers, security platforms, synthetic monitoring, flow data, logs, events, configuration state, and user-experience indicators.
• Establish actionable dashboards, intelligent alerting, dependency visibility, baseline performance, and early-warning thresholds that reduce noise and improve fault isolation.
• Own the technical reliability reporting framework and use evidence from service performance, incidents, capacity, and availability to prioritise engineering improvements.

C. Automation, Infrastructure as Code & Self-Healing

• Design and develop automation for provisioning, configuration validation, compliance checks, inventory, software lifecycle, change pre-checks and post-checks, backup, recovery, and operational reporting.
• Build reusable automation and Infrastructure-as-Code patterns using Python, Ansible, APIs, Git-based workflows, and suitable orchestration platforms.
• Engineer closed-loop or human-approved auto-remediation for repeatable failure conditions, with appropriate security controls, auditability, rollback, and exception handling.
• Promote test-driven network automation, peer review, version control, reusable modules, and standard engineering pipelines across network services.

D. Reliability, Resilience & Capacity Engineering

• Perform reliability and failure-mode analysis for critical network services, identifying single points of failure, hidden dependencies, convergence risks, and operational weaknesses.
• Design and validate high-availability, disaster-recovery, failover, redundancy, traffic-engineering, and service-continuity patterns through regular testing and evidence-based improvement.
• Lead capacity planning using utilisation trends, peak and percentile analysis, growth forecasts, service criticality, and agreed engineering headroom.
• Optimise routing, switching, wireless, security-policy enforcement, application delivery, and network performance to improve stability, scalability, and user experience.

E. Problem Management & Technical Escalation

• Act as the L3 architecture and engineering escalation point for complex, recurring, or cross-domain network reliability issues.
• Lead technical root-cause analysis and blameless post-incident reviews, converting findings into durable architecture, automation, monitoring, process, and documentation improvements.
• Analyse incident patterns, change failures, configuration drift, vulnerabilities, technical debt, and operational toil to eliminate systemic causes rather than repeat manual recovery.
• Partner with Network Operations, Regional NOC, Security, Infrastructure, Application, Cloud, and vendor teams to resolve dependencies and drive corrective actions to closure.

F. Security, Risk, Governance & Lifecycle

• Embed security-by-design, least privilege, segmentation, secure management access, configuration compliance, logging, and resilience controls into network architecture.
• Support technical risk assessments, audit responses, exception reviews, and remediation plans with clear evidence, compensating controls, ownership, and target-state recommendations.
• Govern network hardware and software lifecycle, including standards, version strategy, vulnerability remediation, end-of-sale/end-of-support planning, and technology refresh priorities.
• Ensure architecture and engineering deliverables comply with enterprise policies, change-management requirements, applicable regulatory expectations, and internal control frameworks.

G. Technical Leadership & Capability Development

• Mentor network engineers and SRE practitioners in architecture, automation, observability, reliability engineering, troubleshooting, and documentation disciplines.
• Define reusable playbooks, design templates, engineering checklists, test plans, and operational acceptance criteria for consistent delivery across APAC.
• Facilitate architecture forums, technical reviews, proof-of-concepts, and knowledge-sharing sessions to improve engineering standards and reduce key-person dependency.
• Engage technology vendors and internal stakeholders to evaluate solutions, validate roadmaps, and ensure that investments support the target network architecture.

Qualifications & Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Telecommunications, or a related discipline.
• Minimum 8–12 years of experience in network architecture, network engineering, infrastructure/platform engineering, Site Reliability Engineering, or network operations, including substantial experience in complex enterprise environments.
• Demonstrable experience designing resilient data centre, campus, branch, WAN/SD-WAN, Internet, cloud connectivity, wireless, and network-security solutions.
• Strong knowledge of routing and switching, BGP, OSPF, QoS, multicast, high availability, network segmentation, VPN, DNS/DHCP/IPAM, load balancing, and network access control.
• Hands‑on automation experience using Python, Ansible, REST APIs, Git, data formats such as JSON/YAML, and Infrastructure-as-Code or orchestration practices.
• Strong experience with observability, telemetry, SNMP, syslog, flow analytics, synthetic monitoring, dashboards, alerting, SLIs/SLOs, error budgets, and capacity engineering.
• Experience with enterprise network and security technologies such as Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, F5, Meraki, Zscaler, and Cisco ISE, or equivalent platforms.
• Strong problem‑management, troubleshooting, packet‑analysis, RCA, post-incident review, risk assessment, and technical documentation capabilities.
• Experience in banking, financial services, or another regulated environment preferred; knowledge of MAS TRM and relevant regional regulatory requirements is advantageous.
• Preferred certifications include CCNP/CCIE, vendor security or cloud-networking certifications, Python/Ansible automation credentials, SRE/DevOps qualifications, and ITIL.