senior network reliability engineer

Digital is at the core of how Pfizer delivers Breakthroughs That Change Patient’s Lives. Advanced technologies that accelerate research, development, manufacturing, and patient access to therapies are all made possible by the infrastructures that enable our Digital landscape.

The IT Operations and Global Command Center organization delivers excellence in the pursuit of those breakthroughs through industry-leading infrastructure operations reliability. This is achieved through transparency in business and service health, predictive detection of service interruptions, and improved diagnostics to drive better decisions and interventions. We place data at the heart of what we do and apply a relentless focus on continuous improvement to enable Pfizer’s business processes and patient outcomes.

As a Senior Network Reliability Engineer, you will be responsible for:

• Taking an analytical approach to ensuring services are running smoothly: identifying and regularly reviewing operational health indicators and taking action to ensure services are delivered to defined service levels.
• Continuously analyzing service data to identify and execute upon service improvement opportunities. Opportunities will be assessed on their potential to remove manual effort (‘toil’), improve service reliability, and enhance customer experience.
• Developing, or partnering with other teams to develop automation that will remove toil from the environment, and deliver a more reliable, cost-effective service to the company.

The Network Reliability Engineer will take the lead in applying SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) principles for all technologies supported by Network Operations. These technologies include LAN, WAN, Wireless, DDI, Security, and IP Telephony.

Role Responsibilities

• Assume a technical leadership role on major outages or planned events that impact the services in question. Collaborate with the Command Center to ensure processes are optimized for management of critical incidents including escalation matrices, troubleshooting plans and impact statements.
• Embed core principles and practices of Site Reliability Engineering in the delivery of network services. These services include LAN, WAN, Wireless, DDI, Security, and IPT.
• Ensure services are meeting the quality and reliability outcomes expected by customers: identify and regularly review health indicators, taking actions as required.
• Drive a Predictive Operations focus at Network Operations, where emphasis is placed on identifying and taking action to mitigate potential outages before they become business interruptions.
• Continuously analyze service data to identify improvement opportunities. Opportunities will be assessed on their potential to remove manual effort (‘toil’), improve reliability, and enhance customer experience. Maintain a backlog of prioritized opportunities.
• Apply core principles of Chaos engineering where appropriate to improve network reliability at Pfizer’s critical sites.
• Analyse network capacity and performance trends to anticipate future needs and ensure the network can handle growth.
• As it will be a key mechanism for removing toil, the Lead SRE will drive automation efforts for the services in question. This will entail both developing themselves and partnering with other teams to develop automation code to agreed standards.
• Collaborate closely with Product Owners for Network products. This collaboration will include understanding roadmaps, evaluating automation and improvement opportunities.
• Develop and maintain monitoring artefacts that allow for proactive and pre-emptive monitoring of services, with an objective of avoiding service disruptions. Partner closely with Command Center to integrate the artefacts and associated processes into their day-to-day operations.
• Assume a leadership role on major outages or planned events that impact the services in question. Collaborate with the Command Center to ensure processes are optimized for management of critical incidents including escalation matrices, troubleshooting plans and impact statements.
• Lead post-mortems for major events pertaining to the service. Ensure that learnings from service failures are identified and that action plans are develop and executed upon.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information technology or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of relevant experience in enterprise network operations settings.
• Proficiency in networking protocols such as TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, BGP, and others.
• Keen data literacy, skilled at aggregating multiple data sources to drive insights and actions.
• Understanding of network security principles and practices, including firewalls, VPN, IPS, and encryption.
• Strong technical aptitudes, with demonstrated experience in network technologies outlined above. Exposure to Site Reliability Engineering principles and practices.
• Keen data literacy and analytical ability. Must be able to aggregate data from different sources, derive insights and formulate actions accordingly.
• Proven ability to build and improve processes and workflows. Relentless focus on removing toil (manual effort) through process re-design and automation.
• Embraces accountability and exhibits an ownership demeanor, be it in leading the response to a major incident or facilitating service improvement. Includes the ability to effectively lead others more senior than them, and not directly on the same team.
• Exposure to agile ways of working and aptitudes to be effective in such a paradigm. These include a bias toward action and the discipline to do the day-to-day with excellence (examples: facilitate stand-ups, review health indicators, groom backlog).
• Poise in high-pressure situations, must have a track record of dealing with situations like major outages effectively.
• Communicates in a succinct, accurate and timely fashion. Ability to effectively communicate technical issues/challenges to business recipients.

Preferred Qualifications

• As driving automation efforts is a core responsibility for this role, an understanding of software development concepts and coding concepts (python, Java) is preferred.
• Network vendor certifications (e.g., Cisco, Palo Alto, Arista, Riverbed).
• Understanding of and experience in network monitoring tools.