Network Engineer

As New Zealand's largest telecommunications and digital services company, Spark’s purpose is to help all of New Zealand win big in a digital world. We provide mobile, broadband, and digital services to millions of New Zealanders and thousands of New Zealand businesses.

We operate in an exciting and constantly evolving industry, where the pace of change brings new and unique challenges every day, so we operate using Agile ways of working to allow us to meet the fast-changing needs of our customers. Agile replaces the traditional hierarchical organisational structure to produce a transparent, collaborative environment with highly productive teams who are empowered to deliver better outcomes for our customers, communities, and all of New Zealand.

As a member of the Spark Managed Enterprise Network team, your daily activities will include:

Operations

• Independently perform moderately difficult operational tasks and analysis for complex faults.
• Responsible for reviewing and fixing incidents on customer networks in a timely manner within documented SLA's.
• Perform problem diagnosis, initiate problem resolution and provide ongoing life-cycle support for technology deployments and upgrades.
• Be available to work between 7:00am and 7:00pm on week days to provide support to customers, as well as other after hours works as required.
• Provide after-hours on call support for customers on a rostered basis.

Delivery & Documentation

• Create and maintain diagrams, engineering specifications, configurations, technical implementation plans, models, troubleshooting and support guides.
• Responsible for the technical correctness and completeness of documentation and network diagram updates from changes and implementations, and related artifacts.
• Ensure that change and build activities are completed per engineering diagrams and in alignment with architecture and security standards

Leadership and Partnerships

• Manage effective relationships and work in partnership with leadership, team members, vendors, and contractors to deliver robust technical solutions that are stable, secure, scalable and manageable.
• Manage effective relationships and work in partnership with leadership, teams, services desks, vendors and contractors to deliver operational network services to customers.
• Provide technical subject matter expertise for customer networks.

Project Support

• Utilise performance data and historical metrics to effectively: plan for growth, plan upgrades, migrations, optimizations and new implementations; identify and resolve efficiency issues; and improve overall functionality.
• Collaborate with multi-disciplinary teams
• Be a technical resource on customer projects, implementations and upgrades where required.
• Ensure projects deliver all required documentation for ongoing network operations

Technical Skills

• Relevant qualification in related field. CCNP, CCIE etc.
• Experience implementing and supporting Cisco/Aruba Wireless, Cisco ISE and DNA Center in an Enterprise Environment
• Experience or certifications in Fortinet SD-WAN, Velocloud, Catalyst SD-WAN would be advantageous.
• Scripting skills using Jenkin, Python, Ansible, Terraform hugely advantageous
• Proven analytical ability and problem-solving skills
• Effective Communication - proven presentation and communication skills, both written and verbal.
• Knowledge and practical experience of BGP, OSPF and/or EIGRP protocols, MPLS and QoS.
• Understanding hardware and software performance and scaling limitations
• Ability to balance the "big picture" and short-term implications of individual decisions

Experience

• Experience in a network operations environment gained in a telco, service provider, or major enterprise environment
• A minimum of 5 years in the IT Network Infrastructure field, focussing on operations.
• A minimum of 2 years' experience with Cisco and Aruba
• Strong understanding of WIFI technologies, routing and switching.
• Demonstrate experience in network operations, automated deployments, fault identification, network reporting, and updating network documentation.
• Proven analytical ability and problem-solving skills

Culture

Experienced engineers join us to be involved in innovative enterprise network operations and projects. We're an innovative and exciting group of highly qualified people who love working in a rapidly changing environment. Creating new technologies and being at the forefront of innovation will allow you to design your own career pathway with limitless opportunity!

At Spark, we are constantly looking for ways to build a more inclusive culture. Our vision is for diversity and inclusion to be “how things are done at Spark”, embedded into our day-to-day activities, standards, and business practices. We want you to feel totally comfortable bringing your whole self to work regardless of your gender, ethnicity, orientation, age, or ability.

Sustainability is a key focus for us. We are dedicated to supporting Aotearoa New Zealand’s recovery and economic transformation. The principle of equity is at the very heart of our approach, and we remain committed to working in partnership to make a positive contribution to digital equity in line with our focus on Diversity and Inclusion.

Our people matter and we make sure we look after them. As a valued employee of Spark, we’ve got our people covered with a range of leading benefits including:

• Wellbeing - Comprehensive medical insurance, life and income protection. Access to wellbeing coaches, EAP and in-house Specialist Clinical support through our leading Mahi Tahi Wellness programme.

• Hybrid ways of working - for most teams at Spark this means being in the office for 4 days a week, and 1 day being flexible.

• Leave - in addition to four weeks annual leave, we offer purchased leave, enhanced parental leave support and study leave.

• Spark Credit – we provide permanent employees with $120 monthly Spark credit to use on any of our amazing products.

• Spark Share scheme – periodically we offer the opportunity to buy into our share scheme.

• Career development – access to an internal marketplace that connects employees with experiential, on the job learning across Spark.

Due to the nature and urgency of this role, we are only considering applicants that are based in New Zealand with permanent residency, citizenship, or a valid work visa (with at least 18 months remaining).