Network Operation Engineer

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in New Zealand.

📋 Description

• Observe and understand the monitoring stack, including Zabbix and Grafana dashboards, flow telemetry, and alerts. Familiarize yourself with normal patterns so that deviations stand out, such as dropped BGP sessions, down links, increased latency, breached capacity thresholds, or unexpected data flows from partners.

• Troubleshoot and resolve issues effectively. This is where you establish your value. Verify the authenticity of alerts, gather relevant information, and pinpoint the source of the issue: whether it's a single peer, multiple peers, internal or upstream problems, a genuine outage, or a mere monitoring glitch. Utilize the assistive layer for likely diagnoses and suggested solutions, access configuration history via Git, and refer to live runbooks. Your role involves critically assessing all available information, determining the actual situation, and resolving issues independently whenever possible. Each ticket you resolve personally prevents senior staff from being diverted from their critical tasks.

• Maintain a healthy network, not just one that is operational. A quiet shift does not mean inactivity. Conduct proactive checks: ensure routes are propagating correctly, validate that RPKI and filter chains function as intended, confirm clean peering and transit sessions at the edge, and monitor for any Points of Presence (PoP) approaching capacity limits. Identify gradual degradations that may not trigger alerts. The day shift should receive a network in a verified good state.

• Innovate and automate processes. Eliminate repetitive tasks by scripting manual checks into scheduled ones. Advance our configuration automation (using Jinja for generation, NAPALM or NETCONF/gNMI for device interactions) to ensure changes are based on data rather than memory. When the assistive layer consistently overlooks certain issues, those are strong candidates for automation, and you are ideally positioned to implement those solutions during off-peak hours.

• Propel the work forward. As a member of the network team, engage with the same tasks as your colleagues. Take on tickets from the Linear queue, navigate configuration changes through review and merging, and keep our source of truth (Nautobot) updated as the network evolves. Significant tasks often arise while East Africa is offline, allowing the team to start the day ahead of where they left off.

• Accurately report ongoing incidents. For issues that you cannot resolve independently, ensure a seamless handoff by detailing what is wrong, where it is occurring, the duration, what is affected, whether the situation is worsening, and what actions you have already taken. Avoid speculation presented as fact; provide a clear incident note that enables a senior engineer to act immediately upon review, and ensure a smooth transition to the East Africa team at the end of your shift.

• Escalate appropriately. Familiarize yourself with the escalation ladder: know what you are authorized to address, what requires assistance, and who to involve for specific issues. Promptly escalate genuine outages, as delaying action due to uncertainty can lead to frustration. Manage what you can independently, escalate the remainder quickly and clearly, and avoid excessive caution.

⛳️ Requirements

• Profound networking knowledge, demonstrated through hands-on experience rather than theoretical understanding. A CCNA certification and beyond is desirable. You should have a solid grasp of TCP/IP, routing and switching, IP addressing and subnetting, DNS, DHCP, NAT, and common issues related to these protocols.

• Strong troubleshooting skills. When faced with a degraded link or a dropped session, you know precisely where to investigate and what to eliminate from consideration. You can interpret BGP session states, trace paths using ping and traceroute, and distinguish between local and upstream faults without needing guidance.

• Proficient in BGP concepts. You should be able to read communities and route policies, identify flaps or leaky origins, and comprehend the behavior of transit, peering, and RPKI at the network edge.

• Comfortable with technical equipment and command-line interfaces (CLI). You should be familiar with Linux, network device CLIs, and dashboards. Experience with MikroTik (RouterOS), which we utilize across the network and with many partners, is a significant advantage.

• Proficient in managing configurations in Git. Configuration files are stored in repositories, not directly on devices. You should be capable of reading diffs, understanding configuration changes, and proposing your own modifications with ease.

• Some scripting experience and a desire to expand your skills. Familiarity with Bash or Python is essential to automate repetitive tasks and to contribute to our configuration and automation workflows. We are not seeking someone who merely executes commands without understanding.

• Excellent written English skills. You should be able to convey technical situations clearly and concisely so that someone unfamiliar with the context can grasp the information immediately.

• Composed under pressure and reliably present. When issues arise, you respond with precision rather than panic. You are committed to attending every shift, fully alert and on time.

• Residing in New Zealand or a nearby time zone that aligns with our deep overnight operations during your regular working hours.

🏝️ Benefits

• Competitive salary and private health and wellness benefits

• Fully remote