Network SME (LAN/WLAN & SD-WAN Readiness) - £600 - 650 per day inside IR35

BenchIT seek to appoint a Network Subject Matter Expert (SME) specialising in (LAN/WLAN & SD-WAN Readiness) to take responsibility for the management, configuration and documentation of the Cisco LAN/WLAN estate across all 32 sites and bring every site to readiness for the SD-WAN implementation, which is contracted separately by the organisation. This role is the design authority for the local network during separation: it owns the LAN side of the SD-WAN handoff, works daily with the SD-WAN provider’s delivery team, and ensures site networking never blocks the migration programme or live contact-centre operations., * Take over operational management and configuration of the Cisco LAN/WLAN estate (switching, Wi-Fi, NAC, local firewalls/edge) across 32 sites in 8 countries, establishing configuration baselines and backups.

• Produce and maintain per-site network designs and documentation: topology, VLANs and addressing, QoS for voice/contact-centre traffic, PoE and cabling constraints, circuit inventory.
• Define and execute SD-WAN readiness per site: LAN handoff design, routing integration (BGP/OSPF/static), DHCP/DNS dependencies, QoS alignment for AWS Connect/Genesys voice, and site survey remediation.
• Act as the technical interface to the SD-WAN provider: joint low-level designs, site sequencing aligned to the transition plan, pre-staging, cutover support and post-cutover validation.
• Plan and support site cutovers with rollback positions, prioritising Tier 1 sites and contact-centre continuity; support the 2-4 week stability period per site.
• Design identity-integrated network access against the new company Entra tenant (802.1X/NAC, RADIUS) as sites separate from existing network services.
• Standardise monitoring and alerting for LAN/WLAN into the agreed tooling, with handover runbooks to helpdesk and support staff.
• Track and remediate network risks and dependencies into the programme RAID, including carrier/circuit lead times against the 31 July 2027 TSA boundary.

• 7+ years enterprise network engineering across LAN, WLAN and WAN edge in multi-site, multi-country estates.
• Strong routing and switching: BGP/OSPF, VLAN/L2 design, QoS for Real Time voice; hands-on with at least one major vendor stack (Cisco/Meraki, HPE Aruba, Fortinet or similar).
• Delivered or integrated with an SD-WAN rollout (any major platform: Fortinet, Meraki, Velocloud, Viptela, Versa) from the LAN/customer side.
• Enterprise Wi-Fi design and NAC/802.1X implementation.
• Experience of site cutovers in 24×7 operational environments (contact centre or similar).
• Comfortable as a sole design authority working through third-party field engineers for remote sites.
• Voice/UC network experience supporting CCaaS (Amazon Connect/Genesys) media quality.
• Carrier and circuit management across EMEA/Asia; experience of divestiture/separation network splits.
• Network automation (Python/Ansible) and monitoring tooling integration.

Network SME (LAN/WLAN & SD-WAN Readiness)