Network Engineer

6‑month Senior Network Engineer contract in Didcot, £480 per day, supporting a large, complex network estate for a major UK scientific organisation.

£480 + VAT per day
6‑month Contract (Inside IR35) - Umbrella only
Didcot, Oxfordshire, UK - Hybrid (3 days onsite, non‑negotiable)

Your new company
We're partnered with a nationally important research organisation whose work powers major scientific breakthroughs and supports a wide range of innovative programmes across the UK. Their network infrastructure is essential to enabling collaboration, high‑performance computing, data exchange and secure connectivity across multiple sites. With continued investment in their digital estate, they are now looking for a Senior Network Engineer to help maintain, secure and evolve the organisation's core network services. This is a role where your engineering expertise will directly contribute to research and infrastructure used on a national and international scale.

Your new role
You will be responsible for supporting and maintaining a wide range of critical network services across a busy, multi‑site environment. Your work will span routing, switching, Wi‑Fi, firewalls, IP address management, network access control and cloud telephony, ensuring that connectivity remains reliable, secure and aligned with the needs of a highly technical organisation. You'll play a key part in both day‑to‑day operations and longer‑term improvements, resolving incidents, fine‑tuning configurations, supporting project activity, transitioning new services into live operation and carrying out complex installations or upgrades with a high degree of independence. A significant part of your work will involve monitoring performance, diagnosing issues at source and ensuring that security controls, routing protocols and access policies remain robust. You'll also work across cabling and infrastructure planning, liaising with Estates teams around network requirements for new buildings, refurbishments and site‑wide cabling activity. Clear, accurate documentation will form a natural part of your routine, ensuring that changes, designs and operational standards are recorded properly and understood across the team. This is a practical, hands‑on engineering role where your judgment, problem‑solving ability and technical depth will be central to maintaining a stable and secure network environment.

What you'll need to succeed
You'll bring extensive experience supporting enterprise networks and will be confident managing firewalls, Wi‑Fi platforms, routing protocols and network security technologies. Strong exposure to Fortinet firewalls, enterprise‑grade wireless management platforms, and NAC solutions such as ClearPass will be extremely valuable. You will have worked with OSPF and BGP routing, supported LAN and WAN environments, and be comfortable managing DNS, DHCP, IPv4 and IPv6 addressing, along with IPAM platforms such as Infoblox. Experience working across multi‑site environments, fibre and cabling work, switch configuration and general enterprise networking will be important. Above all, you will be someone who is analytical, methodical and able to remain calm when dealing with complex issues. Clear communication, good documentation habits and the ability to work with people of different technical levels will all be essential. SC clearance is preferred, and the ability to attend site in Didcot 3 days each week is required.

What you'll get in return
You'll be joining an environment where networks form the backbone of vital scientific and operational activity. You will work with a skilled, supportive team, gain exposure to an extensive network estate and play a central role in ensuring secure and reliable connectivity across a nationally important organisation. Your contribution will be recognised, your expertise will be valued and your work will help support research that has a lasting impact.

What you need to do now
If you're an experienced Network Engineer looking for a senior‑level contract with meaningful responsibility and the chance to work on a major scientific network environment, get in touch today to learn more.

Hays Specialist Recruitment Limited acts as an employment agency for permanent recruitment and employment business for the supply of temporary workers. By applying for this job you accept the T&C's, Privacy Policy and Disclaimers which can be found at (url removed)