Principal Architect

Company Description

We are part of International Airlines Group (IAG), one of the world’s leading airline groups and owner of some of the biggest brands in the sky.

With a diverse workforce spread across four countries, IAG GBS provides creative and innovative solutions to drive sustainable transformation by delivering finance, procurement and airline services, as well as group-wide systems across IAG. Each operating company benefits from the GBS centralised model, driving efficiencies, automation and economies of scale.

IAG Tech’s vision is to increase shareholder value, accelerate business performance, delight
customers, enable employees, and protect our business through the innovative and agile use of technology and data.

Job Description

Purpose of the Role
The Network Principal Architect is a technical leadership role responsible for designing, implementing, and managing IAG’s network infrastructure. The role involves leading a small team of domain architects and working closely with cross-functional teams to develop and implement strategy. The Network Principal Architect is responsible for driving innovation, optimizing processes, and enhancing the overall network infrastructure by designing and positioning optimal network architectures aligned with IAG’s business goals.

Accountabilities
Working in partnership with IAG Tech and the business to:

• Technical Leadership: Provide strong technical leadership to the Network Architecture team, fostering a collaborative and high-performance culture to achieve goals and expectations.
• Team Leadership: Lead the team, ensuring mentorship and development are at the heart of your management approach to develop our people and drive excellence.
• Network Strategy: Develop and execute a comprehensive network strategy aligned with business goals and technology trends. Collaborate with senior leadership to define network architecture roadmaps and provide guidance on technology investments.
• Network Design & Implementation: Design, configure, and maintain high-performance network solutions, including LANs, WANs, data centers, and cloud-based network. Provide advisory support for the implementation of network projects, ensuring they meet quality, security, and performance standards.
• Problem Resolution: Collaborate with operational teams post-incident to address architectural concerns affecting in-life network stability.
• Vendor Interactions: Work with 3rd party suppliers to support network requirements, including evaluating, selecting, provisioning, and maintaining vendor relationships.
• Communication and Collaboration: Communicate and collaborate with managed service partners and their engineers. Explain network solutions to both technical and non-technical employees.

This role may require travel and working from multiple sites/locations.

Qualifications

Qualifications

• Educated to degree level or equivalent experience.
• Desired qualification: Technical qualifications/certifications within area(s) of expertise (e.g., CCNA, CCNP)
• Team leadership qualifications and/or membership to a relevant professional body (e.g., Chartered Management Institute, Institute of Leadership & Management)

Skills

• Team Leadership and Management
• Extensive understanding of large enterprise networks and the tooling (NPM, APM, CMDB, etc.) required to monitor and support operations
• Experience in a multi-vendor network environment
• Experience managing third-party suppliers
• Experience in a similar role for a FTSE100 business or organization of comparable size
• Knowledge of Wireless, TCP/IP, spanning-tree, subnetting, routing protocols, access control lists, VPN, Network Access Control, and Firewall operations
• Vendor experience with Broadcom, SolarWinds, LogicMonitor, Cisco, and Juniper
• Desire to work in a fast-paced, agile, and collaborative environment
• Excellent interpersonal skills
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills with an ability to summarize and present to key stakeholders
• Embracing and managing both business and IT change to help shape future direction
• Ability to identify innovative, practical, and cost-effective solutions while recognizing industry trends
• Ability to identify and contribute to the continuous improvement / continuous development of specific tooling solutions
• Risk management, ensuring options are agreed upon & a plan is in place
• Strong ability to work under pressure in a changing environment
• Fluent written and spoken English

Experience

• Leadership experience in a complex global organization, ideally within a business and technology delivery environment
• Demonstrable technical understanding of specific solution areas, e.g., infrastructure, network, hardware, and support tooling
• Demonstrable experience working in complex environments spanning across functions
• Experience in promoting and advocating innovative working methods to increase project speed and effectiveness, specifically agile delivery
• Experience operating across multiple countries and cultures is desirable but not essential.