Job Description

The Network Lead is responsible for end to end leadership, design oversight, and operational stability of a mission critical enterprise network infrastructure.
This role owns Cisco network switching, routing, application load balancing, Fortinet and legacy firewall operations, unified communications network support, and overall Cisco based network architecture, while leading a hybrid onsite and offshore network team.
The Network Lead acts as the primary technical authority and escalation point, working closely with customers, vendors, ISPs, and system integrators to ensure high availability, security, and resilience of critical business systems.

Key Responsibilities:

Technical Leadership & Architecture:

Own and govern the Cisco network architecture across core, border, distribution, access, and data center layers.
Provide architectural oversight for Cisco Nexus / Catalyst switching environments, including Core, Data center and Campus switches
Own architecture and integration of Core Routers, Internet Routers and Application Load Balancers
Lead Fortinet and legacy firewall design and operations, including security policy management, segmentation, and perimeter protection.
Ensure network designs support business critical applications, voice services, and enterprise platforms with zero downtime expectations.

Operations & Reliability:

Act as the final escalation authority (L3/L4) for complex network, firewall, routing, load balancing, and voice related incidents.
Drive root cause analysis (RCA) for major incidents and ensure corrective and preventive actions are implemented.
Enforce change management discipline, risk assessment, and rollback planning for all network and communications changes.
Maintain network stability, performance, and compliance in a 24x7 operational environment.

Team Leadership (Onsite & Offshore)
Lead and mentor a distributed network team (onsite + offshore) with clear ownership and accountability.
Define operating procedures, escalation paths, and support models.
Coach engineers on articulating technical issues in terms of business and service impact.

Stakeholder & Vendor Management

Serve as the primary technical interface to customer IT leadership and business stakeholders.
Work closely with vendors (Cisco, Fortinet, Avaya, ISPs, OEMs) for escalations, TAC coordination, and lifecycle management.
Communicate outages, risks, and remediation plans in a clear, customer facing manner.

Data Center & Ecosystem Understanding:

Demonstrate strong understanding of data center components, including compute, storage, virtualization, and network inter dependencies.
Ensure seamless integration between network, security, compute, application, and unified communications layers.
Support network refresh, migration, and modernization initiatives.

Required Skills & Experience

Core Technical Skills:

Strong hands on and architectural expertise in Cisco Routing & Switching.
Proven experience managing:

Cisco Datacenter Switches:

Cisco Campus Switches:

Datacenter L2 and Campus L2 switches
Experience with Core / Border Routers and Internet Routers.
Experience supporting Application Load Balancers.
Solid operational and design experience with:
Fortinet Firewalls

Legacy Firewall Platforms:

Network support experience for Unified Communications, including:
Voice conferencing lines
IP / SIP Phones
Analog Phones
Fax machines

Avaya Servers and Voicemail:

Media Gateways
Deep understanding of high availability, redundancy, and network resilience in critical environments.

Leadership & Communication

Demonstrated experience leading large, distributed network teams.
Strong customer facing communication and stakeholder management skills.
Ability to translate technical risks into clear business impact statements.

Preferred Qualifications:

CCNP / CCIE (Enterprise or Data Center) or equivalent experience.
Experience in mission critical, high availability environments.
Strong background in major incident management and DR scenarios.
Deep understanding of high availability, redundancy, and network resilience in critical environments.
Essential Criteria
Based in Edmonton; onsite position with willingness to work in shifts.
Authorised to work in Canada, holding Permanent Residency or Citizenship.