Network Technician

Job description

Job responsibilities

This role has responsibility for all deskside support activities and perform all the day-to-day maintenance activities for end-user support of networking devices.

This includes public facing services provided at leisure centres, libraries, registration services and main council offices. The disruption of network services at these sites can cause loss of revenue, failure to deliver statutory responsibilities or general disruptions to council staff or customers. Whilst acting under direction, or following instructions from more senior colleagues in the network and communications team they will need to work quickly, and accurately under pressure.

This documentation and guidance from more senior colleagues will still require a significant level of expertise in enterprise networking. Specific duties and responsibilities include:

Responsible for ensuring Patches are applied to the network device estate in line with the Patching Policy. This will involve discussing required outcomes with stakeholders such as Service Units, the Support teams, Information Governance and the ICT Security team. Including assuring that disruption to staff or customers is kept to a minimum and well communicated.

Responsible for ensuring appropriate Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability of data passing over the corporate data and voice network. This protects the council from common cyber security threats that could cause significant disruption to the organisation. This requires the post holder to follow a comprehensive set of documentation and policies, alongside their own knowledge of network security best practice.

The role holder will act as a subject matter expert with regard to the network provision and associated technologies providing support with local network failures (e.g., a leisure centre), the provision of new setups (e.g., a library move, or a new campus) and other business as usual network changes (e.g., additional Wi-Fi provision, firewall rule changes).

The post-holder will follow appropriate processes to ensure incidents are pro-actively identified (using monitoring tools such as Solarwinds) and rectified quickly and that Service Requests are fulfilled in a timely fashion.

Provides support to assist in troubleshooting user/customer related incidents/concerns, escalating calls to the Network Engineers and Senior Network Engineers using predefined procedures where the resolution falls outside agreed targets where required This includes regularly updating Incident records, operations personnel and customers as required.

Diagnose and repair network hardware faults with assistance from Network Engineers if required, ensuring that where possible they understand how to solve the fault next time and any support documentation is updated. Including where possible automating fixes or passing fixes on to the ICT service desk.

All work to be carried out and documented in accordance with required standards, methods and procedures. The role holder will lead on ensuring that network documentation is provided to the service desk where appropriate, and that documentation is well organised.

The role holders must have the ability to work closely with ICT staff, third party suppliers, Business departments, and partner organisations to manage effective recovery support to all affected business units, track incident statuses and recovery progress and manage customer expectations by communicating effectively with them.

Make recommendations about how to overcome network and security issues that could adversely affect the delivery of Council services.

Examine potential areas for Service Improvement and raise proposals with the Senior Network Engineers and Operational Manager for Network & Telephony.

Person Specification

Experience

Essential

• Educated to degree level or relevant experience.
• ITIL v3 Foundation level qualification desirable or willing to achieve this within 12 months of start.
• Experience of remote / lone working resolving issues independently, with frequent travel.
• Has a good level of understanding of network hardware and troubleshooting including diagnostics and replacement of network components across of a variety of devices for example, switches, wireless access points, branch firewall/routers, UPSs etc.
• Excellent communication skills to inform, help and advise customers clearly and to liaise effectively with other team members to ensure high standards of customer service are achieved.
• Excellent listening skills to understand exactly what customers require.
• Ability to use initiative to ensure the continued provision of ICT to council services.
• Technical skills
• Expert proficiency in between 1 and 3 of the following technologies and a good working knowledge in as many of the following technologies as possible:
• Networking protocols and technologies to include routing, switching and firewall/security mechanisms.
• Ability to maintain and support switching technologies.
• Ability to maintain and support firewall technologies.
• Ability to maintain and support Wi-Fi technologies.
• Ability to coordinate with communications providers cohesively.

Desirable

• Basic knowledge of Juniper Network Routers and switches.
• Basic Knowledge on network operating systems to include JUNOS & Cisco IOS.
• Basic knowledge of Aruba Wireless Solutions.
• Basic knowledge of Network monitoring and management technologies (Solarwinds. JUNOS Space, etc.)

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Employer details

Employer name

Wiltshire Council

Address

County Hall

Bythesea Rd

Trowbridge

Wiltshire

BA14 8JN

Employer's website

http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)