Contract Length:9 months
Location: Hybrid (60% onsite / 40% remote)
Office Location:Knutsford
Rate: £600-£625pd (Inside IR35)

Role Overview

We are seeking a Network Technical Integration Lead to provide engineering leadership across Network Security platforms. This role is accountable for engineering excellence, secure change delivery, and operational resilience, working in close partnership with Product Owners and global delivery teams.

The role focuses on delivering secure, scalable, and automated Network Security solutions, aligned to Zero Trust principles, governance frameworks, and enterprise non-functional requirements, while embedding DevSecOps and SRE practices as standard.

Key Accountabilities1. Product-Aligned Engineering Leadership

• Act as the engineering counterpart to the Network Security Product Owner
• Jointly own technical roadmap, delivery sequencing, and trade-offs between risk, resilience, and delivery velocity
• Collaborate with Component Product Owners and peer Technical Leads to ensure seamless integration with identity, cloud, endpoint, and observability platforms
• Translate product vision and backlog priorities into implementable architectures, designs, and runbooks

2. Secure-by-Design Architecture & Delivery

• Own end-to-end technical design for Network Security services, including:

  • Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA)
  • NGFW, NAC, IDS/IPS
  • Proxy services
  • SIEM / SOAR integrations

• Define and assure non-functional requirements (availability, scalability, performance, security, operability)

• Maintain architecture diagrams, security workflows, threat models, and integration contracts aligned with governance standards (e.g. NIST, ISO 27001)

3. Engineering Quality, Automation & DevSecOps

• Make automation the default through security-as-code, GitOps, and CI/CD practices
• Lead code reviews for Infrastructure-as-Code, configuration management, and automated runbooks
• Ensure testability via change rehearsal, smoke/soak testing, rollback automation, and failure validation
• Continuously improve automated and standard change models to reduce manual intervention and risk

4. Operational Resilience & SRE Practices

• Own engineering input into SRE metrics (MTTR, MTTD, deployment frequency, error budgets)
• Drive defect and incident analytics and remediation sprints
• Support major incident management and post-incident reviews, embedding learning into platform design

5. Governance, Risk & Compliance

• Ensure solutions meet regulatory, risk, and audit requirements with automated evidence where possible
• Balance security posture, compliance obligations, and business enablement
• Embed ITIL-aligned practices without compromising engineering agility

Collaboration & Ways of Working

• Operate within a product triad alongside Product Owners
• Act as a technical mentor and coach for engineers
• Collaborate with peer Technical Leads across infrastructure, cloud, and identity domains to deliver end-to-end Zero Trust outcomes

Required Skills & Experience

• 810+ years experience designing, building, and operating enterprise network security platforms

• Deep hands-on expertise in one or more of:

  • ZTNA, NGFW, NAC, IDS/IPS
  • Proxy services
  • SIEM / SOAR integrations

• Strong understanding of Zero Trust Architecture and policy-based access control

• Proven DevSecOps, IaC, and CI/CD experience

• Solid grounding in ITIL, major incident management, and post-incident review practices

Preferred Certifications

• CCNP / CCIE (Security or Enterprise)
• Vendor certifications (Zscaler, Fortinet, Palo Alto)
• Splunk Admin / Enterprise Security
• ITIL 4 (Managing Professional or equivalent)

Success Measures

• Reduction in change failure rates and repeat incidents
• Improved MTTR and service resilience
• Increased automation and standardised change adoption
• Strong alignment between product strategy, engineering execution, and security outcomes