Network Team Lead

Bury

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Head Office
6 juin 2025

Network Team Lead

 

Title:

Responsible to:

Network Team Lead

Head of Technology Infrastructure

Department:

IT

Location:

JD Sports Fashion PLC,

Balmoral House, Hollinsbrook Way,

Pilsworth, Bury,

BL98RR.

 

Business Overview:

JD Sports Fashion Plc has long been established as the leading UK specialised multiple retailer of fashionable branded and own brand sports and casual wear, principally through the growth of its main retail fascia, JD Sports. The group now has over 2500 stores and is continuing to grow.

 

We instil our staff with the knowledge and training they need to fulfil challenging and rewarding careers.

 

Our workforce is built on motivated self-starters and we encourage our people to constantly seek ways to improve our business. This means challenging the way we merchandise, sell and manage the business, being creative and forward thinking in suggesting alternative solutions. Problems are solved and opportunities seized by people from all levels of the organisation, working together.

 

 

Operational Environment:

Reporting to the Head of Technology Infrastructure, the Network Team Lead will be responsible for the day to day running of the Network Team and the systems they support, including the company’s LAN, WAN, and Internet platforms.

 

Role Description:

The Network Team Lead is responsible for leading the Network Team to ensure the optimal operation of the services they support. This includes ensuring service availability, resolution of incidents within agreed SLA’s, and completion of service requests, project work, continual service improvement tasks, and security improvement activities.

 

In addition, the Network Team Lead should be a technical leader in their field, acting as a technical escalation point for both team members and the IT Service Desk, promoting the business benefits of relevant technology to the wider enterprise and encouraging a strong culture of staff professional development.

 

The Network Team Lead should be a self-motivated individual with a good understanding of complex technical environments and the technologies used. They will be a subject matter expert with the ability to recognise changes in the technological landscape and deliver appropriate improvements to devices across the estate or the relevant back end systems.  

Responsibilities:

 

General

  • Establish and maintain effective relationships with the business users and Group IT teams, and facilitate communication and education between the two disciplines
  • Work with the Head of Infrastructure Technology to agree priorities, and manage the delivery of these through the appropriate meetings and reports.
  • Build strong relationships with relevant 3rd party suppliers and regularly review their performance
  • Take responsibility for the impact to network services of any changes presented to CAB

Operational

  • Monitor incidents escalated by the IT Service Desk and ensure they are resolved in accordance with priority within any applicable SLA’s by a member of the Network Team
  • Prioritise the day to day tasks that need to be undertaken by the Network Team, assigning to required team members
  • Ensure the optimal availability and performance of the network, including the provision of appropriate disaster recovery processes
  • Take technical ownership of the network, including responsibility for defining standards, security, provisioning, performance and availability
  • Identify areas for service improvement, and act on it accordingly by creating and implementing improvement plans
  • Lead the technical delivery of new systems deployed by the business which require infrastructure services
  • Manage the lifecycle of relevant technologies, keeping the estate up to date, and working with the Head of Technology Infrastructure to introduce new technology or retire older systems
  • Act as a subject matter expert on network technology, assisting team members and the wider department and encouraging a knowledge sharing culture and mentoring as appropriate.
  • Promote the benefits of network services throughout the wider group
  • Maintain technical documentation relevant to the network, ensuring it is up to date and easy to follow for all staff who may use it
  • Manage the personal development of all team members
  • Work with the Head of Technology Infrastructure to build, review and develop the network strategy.
  • Assist with any other technical activities related to the businesses network infrastructure as required

Reporting

  • Produce any regular reports or data as required by the Head of Technology Infrastructure
  • Review any incident statistic reports, and implement plans to reduce frequently occurring incidents
  • Monitor any licences that fall under the network remit, reporting areas for cost saving or where additional licencing is required
  • Monitor the capacity of the network, and produce recommendations for increasing capacity where appropriate

 

Experience/Knowledge needed:

 

Essential

  • Experience supporting large, complex networks
  • Exceptionally strong technical skills relating to network platforms, including Cisco and HP Procurve series switches.
  • In depth knowledge of Firewall platforms, including Cisco ASA, Fortinet and Zscaler
  • Strong experience of Aruba wireless technologies
  • Knowledge of enterprise security products
  • Strong ability to relate business requirements to technical solutions
  • Methodical and pragmatic approach to problem solving including the ability to lead collaborative troubleshooting scenarios
  • Strong analytical skills to quickly understand the root cause of incidents and identify long term solutions as opposed to short term resolutions
  • Proven ability to plan, coordinate and prioritise the activities of a small team to reflect the ever-changing needs of the business
  • Experience of working in an ITIL environment, understanding how the end to end processes work across the organisation

 

Preferable

  • Possession of relevant certification
  • Experience of network monitoring and capacity management
  • Strong experience of Network technologies including routing protocols (Static, OSPF, EIGRP and BGP), HSRP, VLANs, STP, ACL, VPNs, SNMP and 802.1x authentication.
  • General knowledge of VoIP technologies including QoS
  • Commercial acumen, including the ability to build strong business cases for related expenditure, and an appreciation of getting good value to ensure costs are sensibly controlled
  • An ability to understand technical problems within a business context

 

Skills/Behaviours:

Essential

  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills
  • Excellent problem solving skills within an IT environment
  • Excellent interpersonal, communication, negotiation and presentation skills, both verbal and written
  • Ability to plan, coordinate and prioritise different activities
  • Ability to work well under pressure, ensuring a structured approach is maintained at all times
  • Ability to liaise with, and relate to, a broad spectrum of individuals
  • Ability to demonstrate both business benefits, and IT benefits where appropriate

Preferable

  • Understanding of project delivery methods
  • A keen interest in following developments within the IT industry