Head of Networks

blueAPACHE is an Australian owned award-winning Managed Service Provider, recognised for the 7th year running, as Mid-Market Partner of the Year at the ARN Innovation Awards.

We pride ourselves on being a genuinely great place to work, with a vibrant culture, clear vision, and strong leadership. When joining blueAPACHE, you are joining an organisation that is driven by our core values of employee and customer experience.

We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace where we embrace our individual talents, and our differences.

Goals:

The Head of Networks owns the strategy, architecture, service design and delivery quality of the MSP's networking practice across a multi-tenant client base. The role is accountable for a standardised, secure, automatable networking fabric that spans campus, data centre, cloud and edge — delivered as repeatable managed services with predictable margin and measurable service outcomes.

This is a leadership role blending technical authority, team development and commercial ownership. The successful candidate sets the reference architectures, governs the vendor stack, matures automation and observability, and ensures the networking practice scales without scaling headcount linearly. They are the escalation point of last resort for major network incidents and the design authority for complex

Requirements

• Substantial senior experience in enterprise or service-provider networking, including a demonstrable leadership or design-authority role — ideally within an MSP or multi-tenant environment.
• Deep, current expertise across secure networking (SASE/SD-WAN/ZTNA), campus, data centre and cloud networking.
• Proven track record designing and operating multi-tenant managed network services at scale.
• Strong grounding in network automation and infrastructure-as-code, with a genuine bias toward standardisation over bespoke work.
• Demonstrated ownership of major-incident response and service-quality outcomes against SLAs.
• Solid understanding of network security and compliance frameworks (Essential Eight, ISO 27001).
• Experience leading, mentoring and growing technical teams.
• Excellent client-facing communication — able to move between an executive QBR and a packet capture without losing the room.

Education:

• Tertiary Education such as Advanced Diploma; Bachelor’s/Master’s Degree in Information technology or equivalent industry experience is required.
• CCIE certification or equivalent experience

The role requires current, hands-on-credible knowledge across:

• Secure networking / edge: SASE/SSE, ZTNA, SD-WAN, secure web gateway, CASB integration (e.g. Fortinet, Palo Alto, Cato, Cisco, Zscaler, Netskope).
• Campus & wireless: enterprise switching, Wi-Fi 6E/7, cloud-managed networking and AIOps-driven fabrics (e.g. HPE Aruba Central, Juniper Mist, Cisco Meraki/Catalyst).
• Data centre: L2/L3 fabric, EVPN-VXLAN, overlay/underlay design, firewalling and load balancing.
• Cloud & multi-cloud: Azure and AWS networking constructs, hub-and-spoke and virtual WAN topologies, cloud-native connectivity, hybrid interconnect.
• Routing, switching & core protocols: BGP, OSPF, VLANs/VRFs, QoS, multicast fundamentals.
• Automation & observability: IaC, configuration management, network telemetry/streaming, flow analytics, AIOps and full-stack correlation.
• Systems Maintenance: Ubuntu Server, Docker containers, NMS infrastructure eg; Tacacs, Radius, Syslog, Grafana, TSDBs

Responsibilities:

• Drive the strategy for the network platform:
• Review current MPLS platform, network architecture and risk register to identify strengths/weaknesses and keep the lights on.
• Review and analyse existing network roadmap, and in consultation with major stakeholders, design, architect and implement the next generation network.
• Lead a network automation transformation for the business to improve efficiency, time to value for our clients and reduce risk.
• Conduct capacity planning including but not limited to organic and exceptional growth.
• Participate in pre-sales activities including timely provision of appropriate solutions to defined client opportunities.
• Engage with opportunity and win strategies with business stakeholders.
• Ensure all proposed client solutions are feasible and are aligned with the core network platforms.
• Participate in blueAPACHE’s CAB to ensure all change requests that impact the core network platform are assessed and approved prior to the change being implemented.
• Actively maintain the Risk Register for the core network, ensuring risks are identified and assessed, and that risk mitigation plans are in place and actioned.
• Develop the core network platform metrics and reports for the executive team, business and IT management.
• Maintain in-depth knowledge of the organisation’s technologies and architectures.
• Develop and maintain current and planned state architectural blueprints.
• Assess the impact upon the Service Provider platforms of enterprise level architecture and infrastructure initiatives, in consultation with the General Manager – Technology.
• In consultation with the General Manager – Technology, be a trusted adviser on technology vendor and solution decisions to meet the business demand.
• Develop TCO models to support business case development.
• Be available and respond to major incidents both during and out of hours as required.
• Cultivate relationships with management across the business.
• Provide technical mentoring and leadership to other engineering staff.

Benefits

blueAPACHE continues to grow alongside some of Australia’s leading midmarket businesses, our valued clients. We continue to stay abreast of current technologies to maintain our competitive advantage, offering the opportunity to continually expand your technical expertise and provide an uncompressing offering to our clients. We recognise our people are our most significant differentiator.

• We offer options for you to interview virtually.
• blueAPACHE offers an environment to make a real difference, develop careers within a supportive and rewarding environment.
• Flexibility to work the way that aligns with our values of employee and customer experience, including hybrid/work from home model.
• Regular social events and an awesome culture – work with a team of experts in their field.
• Ongoing training and development including paid certifications.
• Quality hardware and laptop provided.
• Employee referral programs - once you are in and you are loving it - you can refer a friend and get paid for it!

*** Please note, all offers of employment at blueAPACHE are subject to National Police Checking Service.