Network Architect

About us With over 16,000 people worldwide, we make a huge investment in everyone, offering great career development opportunities. Our people are at the heart of everything we do and we offer a fast-paced environment where we have fun, celebrate success and give you all the tools you'll need to be your best self. It's not just our colleagues we look after - we've got a responsibility to our customers too and we work hard on our ambition that nobody is harmed by gambling. Your role in the team The successful candidate will be immersed in an exciting and fast paced environment. Charged with operating a highly secure, performant and scalable network "as a service" in both the UK and internationally, we are looking for a passionate individual who is looking to make a difference in a dynamic team working with cutting edge technology. You will join a dedicated team of networking professionals who live and breathe technology. You will collaborate with Infrastructure Engineering, Cloud Engineering and Information Security to contribute to and define our future state network strategy. You will build a road-map of deliverables and strategic change necessary to drive William Hill forward against a broader agenda of simplification and automation. You will liaise with relevant stakeholders across William Hill Technology to understand their aspirations, challenges and requirements. You will ensure all products and services within the Networking team portfolio address both internal and external customer use cases and requirements while simultaneously ensuring they are aligned to strategic vision and industry best practice. From a traditional architecture sense, the role encompasses both project centric & enterprise domains, and thus requires a blend of technical and solutions architecture capabilities. You will own high level architectural artifacts, both for specific project deliverables and for broader, more generalised reference architectures. You will help define our design principles, working methodologies, technical standards, key performance indicators and service level agreements moving forward. You will collaborate with designers, engineers and other peers to undertake technology research and development that help us assess emerging network technologies that may help us realise or expedite our ambitions efficiently and in a cost effective manner. You will provide consultative and collaborative technical expertise to the Engineering teams and Project Managers to ensure project-led deliverables are fit for purpose and consistent with our ratified technical standards. You will help mentor less experienced members of the team, contributing to detailed impact analysis and implementation planning where necessary, helping to disseminate knowledge and technical experience into the Network Engineering team. You will also have to communicate complex technical detail in abstract form to non-technical colleagues. You will help us operate the network with a service-based, customer-first approach, to ensure we are providing high quality network, security and connectivity services to all our internal colleagues and customers. We place just as much emphasis placed on good customer service as on technical capability. Skills needed We'd like to see extensive experience working in an architectural capacity within similarly sized organisations that are fast moving, dynamic and results driven. Experience working in organisations that operate large retail, global E-commerce systems and/or real-time trading environments will get our attention. You do not necessarily need to hold certifications, but you must demonstrate in-depth technical knowledge of Cisco and VMware products and technologies, including (but not limited to) Catalyst 4K/6K VSS, Nexus 5K/2K, Firepower/ASA firewalls, ISR, ASR1K and 9K routing platforms as well as F5 LTM/ASM. Deep working knowledge of network protocols, software and standards is a must. Be prepared, we may quiz you on tech such as MPLS L2/L3 VPN, hierarchical QoS, MP-BGP, VXLAN and complex multi-area OSPF designs. We have started our journey into automation and software defined networking. Having invested in Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), VMware NSX/VMC and public cloud services, we are eager to meet people who have used these technologies in production environments. Knowledge and/or experience with wider network automation and orchestration techniques, RESTful APIs and public cloud services will get our attention too, as we seek to build capability with and exploit configuration management and automation tooling such as Ansible, Python, Terraform and templating language such as Jinda2. We aspire to offer network APIs to other teams - perhaps you can make this happen. We are keen on those with thorough understanding of architectural design principles, who can demonstrate understanding and pragmatic usage of architectural frameworks. You must be a strong written and verbal communicator with excellent business acumen. As an architect, you really must be able to skillfully influence people, and must show an ability to manage internal and external relationships up to senior executive levels. We take IT security seriously at William Hill so understanding of PCI-DSS and other data protection laws is advantageous. What we offer We'll welcome you on-board with 25 days holiday (not to mention 8 bank holidays and an extra day for your birthday), a rewarding bonus scheme, healthcare, an attractive pension package, healthy gym discounts and a staff benefits scheme. Plus, our season ticket loan and handy Metro Card loan will save you money getting to work and getting around town. And if you see the journey to work as part of your fitness regime, you'll just love our Cycle to Work scheme. William Hill in Leeds Right in the middle of the creative heart of the UK sit both of our Leeds offices. Leeds itself is a buzzy, busy place to work and live. A hub for tech, digital and gaming companies - there's also five universities right on our doorstep. And away from work, we're in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales and of course have got a competitive sports scene with Leeds United and Yorkshire Cricket and Rugby just up the road in Headingley. Join us behindthebet