Network Engineer

Cambridge

6 months+ contract

Up to £400pd Inside IR35

Provide specialist expertise to establish and maintain NetBox as the authoritative source of record for enterprise network data, ensuring accurate, trusted, and governed network inventory through automated discovery, data assurance, and integration with enterprise platforms.

The role focuses on network data governance, ITSM integration, automation expansion, documentation standards, platform optimisation, network baselining and development of a strategic roadmap towards Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices.

Key Responsibilities

* Review the existing network data landscape, including current data sources, data quality, and data flows between network management, monitoring, automation, and IT service management platforms.

* Assess the current NetBox implementation and identify opportunities to improve data modelling, governance, discovery, assurance, and integrations.

* Develop and enhance the NetBox platform to support enterprise network inventory and lifecycle management.

* Design and implement automated discovery and data assurance capabilities to improve the completeness, accuracy, and integrity of network data.

* Define and maintain the NetBox data model, ensuring it supports operational, automation, and business requirements.

* Establish processes and controls to ensure NetBox remains the trusted source of record for network assets, topology, IP addressing, and associated metadata.

* Design, implement, and enhance integrations with network management and assurance platforms, including Cisco Catalyst Centre, to automate the discovery, validation, and enrichment of network data.

* Develop and enhance integrations between NetBox and enterprise platforms, including ServiceNow, to support accurate and automated CMDB population and synchronisation.

* Develop supporting automation, documentation, and operational processes to maintain data quality and governance.

* Provide knowledge transfer and recommendations to support the ongoing evolution of the platform and its data ecosystem.

* Develop and enforce network naming conventions, taxonomy standards and hierarchical data models.

* Enhance the network data presentation layer, reporting structures and governance controls.

* Perform network device baselining, configuration validation and continual data-quality reviews.

* Support integrations between the Network Source of Truth and ServiceNow CMDB/ITSM.

* Expand network automation using Python, Ansible, REST APIs and, where applicable, Terraform.

* Automate network discovery, compliance reporting, auditing and configuration validation.

* Develop reusable automation workflows, operational runbooks and controlled implementation processes.

* Implement new platform features and reduce repetitive manual activity.

* Define and develop a roadmap towards Network SRE practices.

* Propose service reliability measures, including relevant KPIs, SLIs and SLOs.

* Identify opportunities for proactive monitoring, fault prevention and self-healing automation.

* Work with Operations, Security, Architecture, Platform and ITSM teams to improve resilience and reliability.

Required Technical Skills

Network Source of Truth, IRM, IPAM & DCIM

Hands-on experience with one or more of: NetBox, Nautobot, IP Fabric, Auvik, SolarWinds, Device42 or Infoblox.

Core Networking

Strong knowledge of routing and switching, TCP/IP, BGP, OSPF, MPLS, VLANs, WAN/LAN, SD-WAN and network security fundamentals.

Automation

Practical capability in Python, Ansible and REST APIs. Experience with Terraform, PowerShell and Git/GitHub is desirable.

Monitoring & Observability

Experience with network monitoring or observability platforms such as netbox, SolarWinds, Auvik, IP Fabric, LogicMonitor, Dynatrace, Azure Monitor or Grafana