Getronics - Network Architect

Role Summary:

A Network Architect is responsible for designing and governing network architecture that supports business services. This includes translating requirements into scalable, secure, and resilient designs, and making informed trade-off decisions across cost, risk, and performance.

Core Responsibilities:

Architecture and Design:

• Design enterprise network architecture across data center, WAN, cloud, and hybrid environments
• Define standards, patterns, and reference architectures
• Ensure scalability, resiliency, and security by design

Trade-off and Decision Making:

• Balance performance, cost, risk, and operability
• Evaluate competing approaches (e.g., overlay vs underlay, vendor vs open solutions)
• Make design decisions at the system level rather than the device level

Vendor and Technology Neutrality:

• Evaluate technologies across multiple vendors (e.g., Cisco, VMware, Juniper) and open-source
• Avoid designing around a single vendor's constraints or bias
• Select solutions based on best architectural fit

Complex Programme Delivery:

• Lead architecture across large, multi-domain programmes
• Collaborate with infrastructure, security, cloud, and application teams
• Own end-to-end design coherence rather than isolated components

Stakeholder Management:

• Align stakeholders across security, operations, business, and vendors
• Manage conflicting requirements such as security vs usability, cost vs resiliency, and speed vs governance

Governance and Standards:

• Define and enforce network standards
• Review designs to ensure alignment with architectural principles

Required Skills:

Technical:

• Routing and protocols: BGP (mandatory), OSPF, TCP/IP
• Data center networking and fabric design
• Network security principles (e.g., segmentation, access control)
• Software-defined networking (e.g., NSX)
• VXLAN and overlay networking
• Hybrid cloud networking
• Network automation (e.g., Python, APIs)
• Strong Linux and networking integration
• Experience with containers and infrastructure tooling

Experience:

• Proven delivery of complex, enterprise-scale projects
• Experience with high availability and disaster recovery designs, multi-region and data center interconnects, and secure access models

Soft Skills:

• Strong ability to articulate trade-offs
• Confidence in constructively challenging stakeholders
• Clear communication across both technical and non-technical audiences
• Ability to drive decisions