Network Platform Manager - Patching

Network Platform Patching Manager Contract

Location:Manchester, Sheffield, or Leeds

Contract: Initial 3 months, likely extension to 6 months or longer
Working arrangement: Flexible hybrid working, with potential out-of-hours work that can be completed remotely.

The Opportunity

We are looking for experienced Network Platform Patching Managers to oversee patching activities across a large, complex enterprise network environment.

We have opportunities across three areas:

• Datacentre Patching Manager

• Branch & Campus Patching Manager

• Network Appliances Patching Manager

Each role will take ownership of patching delivery for its respective platform, ensuring changes are properly planned, tested, implemented and documented, while minimising operational risk and service disruption.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and manage the patching pipeline for your assigned network platform.

• Maintain accurate records of network assets, software versions and patching status.

• Assess technical dependencies, prerequisites and potential risks ahead of changes.

• Review or develop implementation, validation and rollback procedures.

• Ensure engineers have the necessary access, training and technical information.

• Coordinate pre-change health checks, post-change testing and acceptance criteria.

• Manage failed changes, operational risks and recurring issues, supporting troubleshooting and recovery.

• Work closely with engineering teams, operations, vendors and service owners.

• Maintain accurate change records, audit evidence and lessons learned.

• Provide regular patching compliance, exception and progress reporting to the Global Patching Manager.

What We're Looking For

• Strong experience in network infrastructure, operations, patching or technical change management.

• Good understanding of enterprise networking environments and the operational risks associated with infrastructure changes.

• Experience coordinating technical teams and delivering changes within live production environments.

• Strong knowledge of change governance, testing, rollback procedures and operational resilience.

• Ability to identify technical dependencies, challenge inadequate plans and escalate risks appropriately.

• Excellent communication, organisation and stakeholder-management skills.

• Comfortable coordinating specialist engineers and managing incidents or recovery activities when required.

Platform-Specific Experience:

Datacentre Patching Manager

Experience or understanding of core routing and switching, datacentre interconnects, spine-and-leaf architectures, WAN connectivity, redundancy and failover, hosting dependencies, application testing and maintenance sequencing across resilient infrastructure.

Branch & Campus Patching Manager

Experience or understanding of branch connectivity, WAN, campus switching, wireless networks, local resilience, regional connectivity, site-access constraints, large-scale deployments, staged rollouts and remote recovery procedures.

Network Appliances Patching Manager

Experience or understanding of firewalls, load balancers, VPNs, NAT, high-availability clusters, traffic policies, certificates, licensing, session persistence, connection draining and application/security validation.

You don't need to be the deepest technical specialist across every technology, but you must understand the operational impact of changes, coordinate delivery safely and know when specialist support is required.

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