Mission Critical Application & Infra Support Specialist

As a Mission Critical Application and Infrastructure Technical Specialist at Cadent, you’ll be responsible for supporting and enhancing the critical technology platforms that underpin our operational environments. Working across our Mission Critical estate, you’ll help ensure the availability, reliability, security and performance of the systems that support Cadent’s control room operations, operational technology environments and business-critical services.

This is a highly technical role where you’ll act as a subject matter expert for Mission Critical applications, infrastructure and connected systems. You’ll work closely with operational teams, architects, delivery teams, vendors and security specialists to ensure services remain stable, secure and fit for the future.

From supporting mission-critical SCADA environments and operational technology platforms to driving platform roadmaps and disaster recovery planning, you’ll play a key role in safeguarding services that operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Why you’ll love this role

This role offers the opportunity to work on systems that directly support one of the UK’s most important critical infrastructure environments.

Critical Infrastructure Impact - Support and maintain the technology that enables safe and reliable gas network operations.

Technical Variety - Work across SCADA systems, operational technology, infrastructure, middleware, integrations and supporting applications.

Platform Ownership - Take responsibility for the health, performance, maintenance and evolution of critical platforms and services.

Security & Resilience Focus - Help ensure systems remain secure, compliant and aligned with Safe Control of Operations (SCO) and cyber security requirements.

Strategic Influence - Contribute to application, infrastructure and platform roadmaps that support future business needs.

High-Profile Environment - Engage with senior stakeholders, operational control room teams, technology vendors and government-facing organisations.

You’re an experienced technical specialist with strong operational support experience and a passion for maintaining resilient, secure and high-availability systems.

Critical Systems & Infrastructure Experience

• Experience supporting mission-critical systems in a 24x7x365 environment

• Strong understanding of application support, infrastructure management and service operations

• Experience managing incidents, problems, changes and continual service improvement activities

Operational Technology & SCADA Knowledge

• Knowledge of operational technology environments and supporting infrastructure

• Experience working with or supporting SCADA systems

• Understanding of critical operational environments and associated technologies

Technical Expertise

• Strong technical knowledge across a number of the following areas:

• Windows Server and Client administration

• Active Directory and Citrix technologies

• System and security monitoring

• Clustering and high-availability solutions

• Disaster recovery and business continuity planning

• Storage and backup technologies

• Configuration management

• DNS and proxy services

• SQL Server and data integration technologies

• Aveva PI Server and PI Vision

• SAP Solace AEM

• ArcGIS and associated applications

• Globalscape EFT and enterprise file transfer platforms

• Schneider Electric ClearSCADA / GeoSCADA technologies

Development & Data Skills

• Knowledge of programming and scripting technologies such as .NET, Java, Visual Basic, XML or C/C++

• Understanding of SQL, relational databases and time-series data

• Experience supporting integration and middleware solutions

Stakeholder & Leadership Skills

• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills

• Ability to translate technical issues into business-focused language

• Strong analytical and problem-solving capability

• Experience collaborating with suppliers, project teams and business stakeholders

Qualifications & Experience

• Degree in Computing or a related discipline, or equivalent experience

• SCO certification at CP/AE level

• Typically 5-10 years’ IT experience, including experience in 2nd or 3rd line support roles within complex enterprise environments