Cisco Catalyst Network Engineer

We have an exciting job opportunity for Cisco Catalyst Network Engineer role at Newbury, UK

Role: Cisco Catalyst Network Engineer

Duration: Contract

Location: Newbury, UK

Working Hours: 24/7 Shift Rota

Role

We are seeking a Senior Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Engineer to join the dedicated MES team.
This role sits as an SD-WAN technical authority within the team, providing engineering consultancy, assurance, and governance across the SD-WAN estate rather than operating solely as an implementer.

The successful candidate will lead and support medium, and complex network changes, incident troubleshooting as needed, assist in operational governance, and act as a technical advisor to both the customer and internal Vodafone MES teams.

Key Responsibilities

1. Act as technical authority for Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN within the dedicated MES team.
2. Provide consultative input for Simple, medium, and complex WAN/LAN changes, Routing and design decisions (underlay/overlay, VRFs, segmentation,etc.) and risk assessment and impact analysis for proposed changes
3. Change, Governance & Operational Assurance: Contribute to technical governance forums with the Customer and internal stakeholders. Ensure strong housekeeping and hygiene across the estate, including Configuration drift detection and remediation, Template governance in vManage, Version, feature, and compatibility alignment
4. Help with best practice for security posture, firmware upgrade strategy etc.
5. Work with the CTL to support CAB processes with clear, senior-level technical narratives and risk statements.
6. Work with the CTL to design and maintain tailored dashboards in Cisco vManage aligned to customer operational and governance needs. Work with STP, CTL, Cisco and 3rd Line and others to enhance visibility, trend analysis, and proactive issue identification.
7. Maintain a strong end-to-end view across WAN, LAN, and Wi-Fi, ensuring seamless handoff between domains.
8. Support 3rd Line teams on complex routing scenarios, inter-domain dependencies (WAN->LAN and Security) and support for incidents and problems
9. Ensure artefacts reflect current live state, not just original deployment intent.
10. Comfortable engaging directly with customer technical and governance stakeholders.

Required Skills & Experience

• Senior-level experience designing and operating Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN. Strong understanding of routing protocols (BGP, OSPF), VRF-based segmentation, AAR, QoS design and enforcement, Security services (Firewall, IDS/IPS, URL filtering) etc.
• Proven experience operating as a technical authority, not just a delivery engineer.
• Hands-on experience with Cisco vManage dashboards and APIs.
• Strong governance mindset, with experience in regulated or CNI environments.
• Ability to mentor and guide 3rd Line engineers.

Desirable

• Experience in Critical National Infrastructure or highly regulated environments.
• Familiarity with ServiceNow or equivalent ITSM integration
• Cisco certifications (eg CCNP/CCIE Enterprise), desirable but not mandatory.