Infrastructure Engineer – Production Network Engineering

Purpose of the role

To build and maintain infrastructure platforms and products that support applications and data systems, using hardware, software, networks, and cloud computing platforms as required with the aim of ensuring that the infrastructure is reliable, scalable, and secure.  Ensure the reliability, availability, and scalability of the systems, platforms, and technology through the application of software engineering techniques, automation, and best practices in incident response. 

Accountabilities

• Build Engineering:  Development, delivery, and maintenance of high-quality infrastructure solutions to fulfil business requirements ensuring measurable reliability, performance, availability, and ease of use. Including the identification of the appropriate technologies and solutions to meet business, optimisation, and resourcing requirements.
• Incident Management: Monitoring of IT infrastructure and system performance to measure, identify, address, and resolve any potential issues, vulnerabilities, or outages. Use of data to drive down mean time to resolution.
• Automation:  Development and implementation of automated tasks and processes to improve efficiency and reduce manual intervention, utilising software scripting/coding disciplines.
• Security: Implementation of a secure configuration and measures to protect infrastructure against cyber-attacks, vulnerabilities, and other security threats, including protection of hardware, software, and data from unauthorised access.
• Teamwork:  Cross-functional collaboration with product managers, architects, and other engineers to define IT Infrastructure requirements, devise solutions, and ensure seamless integration and alignment with business objectives via a data driven approach.
• Learning: Stay informed of industry technology trends and innovations, and actively contribute to the organization's technology communities to foster a culture of technical excellence and growth.

Vice President Expectations

• To contribute or set strategy, drive requirements and make recommendations for change. Plan resources, budgets, and policies; manage and maintain policies/ processes; deliver continuous improvements and escalate breaches of policies/procedures..
• If managing a team, they define jobs and responsibilities, planning for the department's future needs and operations, counselling employees on performance and contributing to employee pay decisions/changes. They may also lead a number of specialists to influence the operations of a department, in alignment with strategic as well as tactical priorities, while balancing short and long term goals and ensuring that budgets and schedules meet corporate requirements..
• If the position has leadership responsibilities, People Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others..
• OR for an individual contributor, they will be a subject matter expert within own discipline and will guide technical direction. They will lead collaborative, multi-year assignments and guide team members through structured assignments, identify the need for the inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions..
• Advise key stakeholders, including functional leadership teams and senior management on functional and cross functional areas of impact and alignment.
• Manage and mitigate risks through assessment, in support of the control and governance agenda.
• Demonstrate leadership and accountability for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work your team does.
• Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of the organisation functions to contribute to achieving the goals of the business.
• Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategies.
• Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought comparing and selecting complex alternatives. In-depth analysis with interpretative thinking will be required to define problems and develop innovative solutions.
• Adopt and include the outcomes of extensive research in problem solving processes.
• Seek out, build and maintain trusting relationships and partnerships with internal and external stakeholders in order to accomplish key business objectives, using influencing and negotiating skills to achieve outcomes.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.

Embark on a transformative journey as an Infrastructure Engineer Production Network Engineering at Barclays, where you spearhead the evolution of our digital landscape, driving innovation and excellence. You'll harness technology to revolutionise our digital offerings, ensuring unparalleled customer experiences.

Production Network Engineering is a new mission aligned operating model within the newly formed Network Product Design & Engineering domain at Barclays. Network Product Design & Engineering is responsible for the design, build and run of the underlying strategic network infrastructure platforms and the over-the-top connectivity products and services that enable systems, colleagues, guests and partners

To be successful in this role as an Infrastructure Engineer – Production Network Engineering, you should possess the following skillsets:

• Extensive experience as an individual contributor in the design, build and operate of Telco hardened virtual infrastructure ecosystems such as Openstack, Kubernetes, QEMU, KVM, HCI spanning Cloud Platforms for example Public, Edge, Private and uCPE Platforms for example x86, Arm CPU architectures to enable the delivery of heterogeneous network systems, products and services at enterprise scale

• Deep understanding of open-source networking technologies such as kernel (including eBPF, AF_XDP), OVS, OVN, SoNIC, DENT, Switchdev, ONF stack, Iwd, NetworkManager, including data path acceleration protocols and interfaces such as RDMA, RoCE, iWARP, NVMe, SR-IOV and DPDK, alongside familiarity with Cloud Native Functions and Container Networking Interface plugins

• Experience in multi-layered IP Network engineering including good experience in network programming / automation, IaC, configuration management tools and data modelling such as RESTCONF, NETCONF/YANG, Python, Shell, Ansible, Saltstack, Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM; with demonstrable experience of DevOps, agile methodologies and CI/CD pipelines

Some other highly valued skills include:

• Knowledge working in Network and infrastructure operational product engineering and knowledge of classical network element management, SDN Controllers and ETSI MANO. CCNP, VMWare VCP, RHCE or equivalent certification an added advantage.

• Experience in performance and security engineering including experience with concepts of zero trust networking and a familiarity of Application Layer Network Protocols - HTTP/HTTPS, TLS/SSL, DNS, DHCP, etc. an added advantage

• Skilled in lifecycle management of network products and services including requirements analysis, platform selection, technical architecture design, service design & development, testing and deployment at scale, including proficiency in Agile Methodologies Scrum/Kanban, backlog and workflow mgmt. and SRE specific reporting (MTTR, deployment frequency, SLO etc)

You may be assessed on the key critical skills relevant for success in role, such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen strategic thinking and digital and technology, as well as job-specific technical skills.

This role is based in our London office.