Responsibilities
- Lead, mentor, and manage the network team, consisting of service, operations and delivery capabilities (approx. 7 people), ensuring clarity of roles within the operating model.
- Provide coaching, direction and subject matter leadership to team members, fostering a high-performance culture focused on service excellence, reliability, and continual improvement.
- Act as the service owner for network services, ensuring stable, secure, and resilient end-to-end service delivery across WAN/SD-WAN, LAN/WLAN, Firewalls, Remote Access and Public DNS.
- Provide governance and oversight of operational activities performed by internal teams and managed service providers, ensuring compliance with SLAs, KPIs, and operational standards.
- Ensure effective incident, problem, change and lifecycle management processes are followed in line with ITIL frameworks.
- Drive the development, execution, and continuous refinement of the network strategy and roadmap, including Zero Trust, network simplification, cloud networking and secure access initiatives.
- Lead network related transformation and continuous improvement programmes, ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture, cyber security and wider IT strategy.
- Own day-to-day and strategic relationships with key vendors and managed service providers, ensuring effective performance management, service governance and contract alignment.
- Lead governance forums, including monthly service reviews, operational performance reporting, issue escalations and risk management. Ensure suppliers adhere to compliance and security standards and deliver consistent, high-quality service.
- Ensure network services and operations meet internal and external regulatory standards.
- Maintain oversight of network asset and configuration management processes, ensuring accuracy and audit readiness.
- Engage and collaborate with IT Leadership, Architecture, Workplace, Data Centre & Cloud and Shared Services to ensure network services are integrated, scalable and support business needs.
- Act as a trusted advisor to divisional and operating company teams on network related activities, ensuring alignment with strategic direction and architectural standards.
- Communicate network service health, risks, constraints and opportunities to stakeholders in clear and business relevant terms.
- Provide leadership and oversight for network related initiatives and projects, ensuring appropriate planning, governance, resourcing and vendor coordination.
- Support the delivery of transformation activities such as Zero Trust pilots, Network Asset Management, large scale refresh cycles and architectural transitions.
Qualifications
- Drive Results – consistently achieving objectives, even under tough circumstances, pushing self and others to accomplish goals.
- Have Courage – stepping up to address difficult issues, saying what needs to be said.
- Cultivate Innovation – creating new and better ways for the organisation to be successful.
- Have a Strategic Mindset – seeing ahead to future possibilities and translating them into breakthrough strategies.
- Attract and Develop Talent – attracting, selecting and developing talent to meet the organisation’s goals and needs.
- Be Resilient – rebounding from setbacks and adversity when facing difficult situations.
- Collaborate – building partnerships and working collaboratively with others to meet shared objectives.
- Make Quality Decisions – making good and timely decisions that keep the organisation moving forward.
- Drive Vision and Purpose – painting a compelling picture of the vision and strategy that motivates others to action.
- Leader – strong leadership and interpersonal skills to manage and mentor a team.
- Visionary Moderniser – able to think outside the situation on the ground and drive towards best‑in‑class modern technology and practice.
- Critical thinker – a problem solver who resolves conflicts.
- Customer Focused – looks for ways to innovate to improve the focus on the customer.
- Motivated – stays motivated and can deal with resistance.
- Coaches others – builds on strengths and improves on weaknesses, listens to and encourages regular honest feedback.
- Detail oriented – drills into detail and takes corrective action early and decisively; prepared to breakdown organisational boundaries through collaboration and cross‑staffing by building strong relationships based on trust with peers.
- Proven project management skills – able to work well under pressure and meet deadlines.
- In‑depth knowledge of networking concepts, tools, infrastructure and capabilities.
- Experienced with multiple networking software products, platforms and vendors.
- Strong vendor management skills – experienced managing third‑party relationships.
- Strong professional accreditations / certifications such as ITIL, CISCO, Azure, CompTIA+ etc.
- Language: English (Fluent). Desirable: second European language (preferred).
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills with people at all levels across the organisation.
- Excellent organisational and time‑management skills, with the ability to handle multiple priorities.
- Effective negotiation skills – able to facilitate collaboration with internal stakeholders, vendors and MSPs.
- The ability to translate business requirements into viable technical solutions.
- Strong stakeholder management skills – all directions.
- The ability to communicate complex concepts to technical and non‑technical audiences.
- College diploma or university degree in business, information systems or technical related subject.
- Minimum of 5 years hands‑on, technical experience as part of a network operations team and wider infrastructure/IT team.
- Minimum of 5 years management experience as part of a network operations team or wider infrastructure/IT team.
- Experience working in the construction materials/industrial manufacturing sector.
- Proven experience of working in a federated matrix model.
CRH is an equal opportunity employer.
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