Infrastructure Manager

INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGERSouthampton / Hybrid£80k-£85kROLE SUMMARYWe are a telecommunications provider operating carrier-grade, on-prem infrastructure. We maintain our own IP space via RIPE, run our own ASN, and deliver business-critical unified communications and telephony services.The Infrastructure Manager is the senior owner of our entire network estate and the operational leader of the infrastructure team. This person is accountable for the reliability, performance and resilience of our network, and for the people, processes and governance that keep the team operating at a high standard.This is a hands-on leadership role. You will manage and direct the infrastructure team day-to-day, set the operational cadence, enforce policies and procedures, and own the network personally, from BGP and peering to the routers, switches and carrier relationships that underpin everything we do.ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENTOn-prem, bare-metal infrastructure across four interconnected sitesFibre ring topology with geographic resilienceMinimal public cloud usageBusiness-critical production telecoms services with real-world uptime demandsA growing infrastructure team that requires strong technical leadership and operational maturityKEY RESPONSIBILITIESNETWORK OWNERSHIPOwn and operate the core IP network across all points of presenceOwn all BGP operations within our ASN, including peering policy, prefix filtering, traffic engineering and failure recoveryManage RIPE resources, IP allocations and routing policy hygieneMaintain and develop peering and interconnects at LONAP, LINX and private linksConfigure, operate and maintain the MikroTik and Juniper router and switch estateOwn all carrier and provider relationships, including contract management, escalation and service performance accountabilityLead all network-level incident response and post-incident root cause analysisPEOPLE MANAGEMENT & TEAM LEADERSHIPDirectly manage the infrastructure team, currently two engineers, with full line management responsibilityRun structured 1:1s, team stand-ups and operational reviews on a regular cadenceSet tasks, priorities and workloads across the infrastructure teamApprove holidays, manage team schedules and ensure adequate cover at all timesConduct performance reviews and support the professional development of each team memberIdentify and eliminate single points of failure in team capability and knowledgeMentor engineers and create a culture of ownership, accountability and continuous improvementOPERATIONAL GOVERNANCE & PROCESS MANAGEMENTOwn and enforce change management processes across all infrastructure changesImplement and maintain robust incident response, escalation and major incident proceduresAct as senior escalation lead for all Priority 1 and Priority 2 incidentsDrive post-incident reviews with clear root cause analysis and tracked corrective and preventive actionsEnforce policies for backup integrity, patching, vulnerability remediation and access controlOversee disaster recovery and failover testing, ensuring procedures are validated regularlyDOCUMENTATION & STANDARDSMaintain accurate and up-to-date network diagrams, runbooks, SOPs and recovery documentationSet and enforce documentation standards across the infrastructure teamCoordinate and sign off on DR and failover test outcomesProvide senior support for managed customer networks, including Cisco, TP-Link Omada and DrayTekCROSS-FUNCTIONAL COLLABORATIONCollaborate with the Senior DevOps Engineer and service teams to align network and infrastructure strategyReceive, review and approve architecture proposals and business cases from the DevOps functionRepresent infrastructure operations in leadership meetings and present proposals to the board where requiredNETWORK & CUSTOMER ARCHITECTURE SUPPORTThe Southampton office functions as a secondary production site, hosting compute infrastructure alongside an active business network serving the wider team. This is not a standard office network. It is managed to data centre standards and forms part of the overall infrastructure estate.Own and maintain the office network infrastructure, treating it as a secondary data centre environmentEnsure the office network meets the same standards of reliability, segmentation and resilience as primary production sitesLiaise closely with the Head of Technical Services, Karl, to coordinate any network work required at the office location, ensuring clear ownership and no gaps in coverageAct as the senior technical authority for network-related issues at the Southampton office, delegating physical work in conjunction with the Head of Technical Services as appropriateLend infrastructure expertise to complex, high-value customer network projects delivered by the Circle Cloud technical teamWork alongside the Head of Technical Services and sales/solutions teams to architect and validate technically complex customer network deploymentsProvide senior-level expertise on customer network designs where carrier-grade knowledge or multi-site topology experience is requiredTELECOMMUNICATIONS PLATFORMSSupport and maintain core telephony and UC platforms, ensuring high availability for real-time communications workloadsLead operational stability and migration readiness across legacy and strategic platform layersAct as senior escalation for platform-level incidents impacting service continuityPERFORMANCE KPIsNetwork uptime and availability against agreed monthly SLA targetsAn annual performance bonus is tied to network uptime and operational KPIs. Outages or service-impacting incidents that are within the Infrastructure Manager's direct control will result in a deduction from this bonus. Incidents attributable to third-party provider failures, force majeure or factors demonstrably outside the role's direct control are excluded from any deductionIncident MTTR (Mean Time To Resolve): sustained improvement in restoration speed for P1 and P2 incidentsChange success rate: reduction in failed or rolled-back production changesDocumentation coverage: critical runbooks, diagrams and SOPs complete, reviewed and audit-readyRCA quality and closure: all major incidents resolved with a complete root cause analysis and corrective actions closed on timeTeam performance: engineers are productive, developed and operating within clear frameworksREQUIRED EXPERIENCEAdvanced IP networking in carrier or ISP-level production environmentsDeep, hands-on BGP operations, including traffic engineering, redundancy design and live incident recoveryStrong MikroTik RouterOS and Juniper Junos configuration and operations experienceRIPE resource management and IP administrationProven team leadership with direct line management responsibilityOperational governance experience, including change control, incident management and process disciplineStrong documentation standards in production environmentsExperience managing carrier and third-party provider relationshipsDESIRABLE EXPERIENCEPrior experience in a telecoms or UC service provider environmentFamiliarity with Proxmox, Docker or virtualisation platforms at an operational levelMentoring and development of junior and mid-level engineersExperience introducing enterprise-grade operational practices into growing teamsWORKING STYLEHands-on, methodical and reliable in live production network environmentsCalm, decisive and accountable under pressureStrong ownership mindset, leading from the front and following throughCollaborative with DevOps, service and development teamsA leader who sets the bar, holds the team to it and supports them in meeting itWORKING HOURSNominally 08:30 to 17:30. This is a senior role with autonomy and accountability. We value outcomes, ownership and effective time management over clock-watching. Out-of-hours support is required on a planned and escalation basis.BENEFITSCompany eventsCompany pensionOffice canteen and games zoneCycle to work schemeDiscounted or free foodEmployee discountHealth and wellbeing programmeOn-site parkingPrivate medical insuranceReferral programmeWork from home as part of an agreed hybrid pattern