Senior Platform Network Engineer

Senior Platform Network Engineer

Posted 4 days ago by Bluesticker Creative

£65,000 Per year
Undetermined
Undetermined
London, England, United Kingdom

Summary: The Senior Platform Network Engineer at FLOX will play a crucial role in managing the entire networking stack, ensuring security and performance across agricultural environments. This position involves collaboration with various teams to optimize platform architecture and develop automated systems for network and platform reliability. The role offers opportunities for growth within a diverse and innovative start-up focused on transforming poultry farming through technology. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in networking protocols and experience with various hardware and software solutions.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Own the entire networking stack: edge hardware, VPN configurations, cloud networking, on-premises and edge deployments, ensuring comprehensive security.
  • Lead network hardware specification, qualification, configuration, and deployment across diverse agricultural environments.
  • Operate monitoring systems to ensure network uptime and performance, responding to issues through established incident management processes.
  • Conduct remote and on-farm network debugging and issue resolution, collaborating on root cause analysis and implementing systematic improvements.
  • Develop comprehensive scalability plans for the global network of systems and devices, aligned with international growth objectives.
  • Leverage AI-driven network optimisation and automation to ensure operations scale efficiently.
  • Configure and maintain load balancers, network switches, routers, and wireless infrastructure for farm deployments.
  • Design and implement infrastructure-as-code solutions for automated network and platform deployments.
  • Define and maintain scalable data pipelines to process multimodal inputs from network edge devices.
  • Build internal tools, diagnostics, and platform APIs that empower product delivery teams.
  • Develop automated systems to detect network and platform anomalies with escalation workflows.
  • Work cross-functionally with Computer Vision, DevOps, and Product colleagues to align platform capabilities with product goals.
  • Optimise platform architecture for high availability and fault tolerance through resilient patterns.
  • Lead the development of infrastructure for deploying and monitoring edge applications and services.
  • Collaborate with tech leads on incident response, architectural reviews, and decision-making.

Key Skills:

  • Understanding of networking protocols: TCP/IP, BGP, OSPF, VLAN, STP, LACP.
  • Experience with switches/routers from Cisco, MikroTik, Netgear, Ubiquiti (or equivalent).
  • Experience with wireless deployments (Wi-Fi 6/6E) and resilient WANs (Starlink, cellular backup).
  • Experience with PoE systems and fibre: PoE+/PoE++, extenders, CAT5/5e/6 cabling, single/multi-mode fibre.
  • Experience with IoT gateways and messaging: BLE gateways, MQTT.
  • Understanding of storage/compute for edge AI: local storage for model training, ZFS, RAIDs, NFS.
  • Experience with security controls: firewalls, VPNs, NAT gateways; understanding of zero-trust and ACLs.
  • Experience with Python and FastAPI; understanding of data/messaging systems: Kafka, MySQL, MongoDB, PostgreSQL.
  • Experience with containers and orchestration: Docker; Kubernetes networking and service mesh; RKE2.
  • Experience with streaming protocols: RTMP, WebRTC, HLS, MPEG-DASH.
  • Experience with monitoring/telemetry: Prometheus, Grafana, Alertmanager, Thanos; ELK; Jaeger.
  • Experience with CI/CD and automation: Jenkins, GitLab, Sonatype Nexus, Terraform, Ansible, Argo CD.
  • Experience with cloud platforms: AWS (primary), with GCP/Azure exposure.
  • Experience with MLOps/data tooling: DVC, MLFlow, Airflow, Dagster, CVAT, Weights & Biases; data lakes/warehouses.

Salary (Rate): £65000 yearly

City: London

Country: United Kingdom

Working Arrangements: undetermined

IR35 Status: undetermined

Seniority Level: Senior

Industry: IT

Detailed Description From Employer:

The Mission At FLOX, we believe smarter farms lead to thriving chickens and healthier lives. Our mission is simple: healthier chickens benefit everyone. Thats why we built FLOX360, a system that uses Computer Vision, smart sensors, and real-time insights to transform poultry farming. By helping farmers improve welfare and efficiency, FLOX360 creates a win-win for birds, farmers, the environment, and people everywhere. Today, were watching 60 million chickens a year. We believe we are setting the standard for animal welfare and smart farming - and were just getting started.

The People Were a Diverse Team Of Engineers And Entrepreneurs, Representing Over 13 Nationalities And All Walks Of Life - Even a Few Vegetarians! We Are Brought Together By a Shared Passion For Meaningful Impact. Our Culture Is Grounded In Values We Live Every Day Empathetic Artisan - We approach our work with care, artistry, and genuine empathy for each other and our users. We lead with positivity and passion. Tenacious Innovator - Innovation drives us. We trust ourselves, keep learning, and uncover bold solutions that redefine whats possible in poultry farming. Hand in Glove - One mission, one team. We grow together with patience, trust, and transparency, amplifying each others strengths to revolutionise farming. Worth Building - Worth celebrating. We dedicate ourselves to work that matters, taking pride in creating disruptive solutions our users cant live without.

This is an exciting moment of growth for FLOX - and were looking for ambitious, humble, and purpose-driven people to join us in building a future of smarter farms, thriving chickens, and healthier lives.

The role We are currently seeking a Senior Platform Network Engineer to work directly under our CTO in our office in London. This role sits in the Engineering Team, and you will report directly to the Senior Engineering Manager. Were a growing start-up with plenty of room for progression and making the role your own. Occasionally, and in line with your strengths and interests, you may be asked to work outside your job description.

Network Infrastructure What you will be doing:

  • Own the entire networking stack: edge hardware, VPN configurations, cloud networking, on-premises and edge deployments, while ensuring comprehensive security for FLOX, its customers and stakeholders
  • Lead network hardware specification, qualification, configuration and deployment across diverse agricultural environments
  • Operate monitoring systems to ensure network uptime and performance, responding to issues through established incident management processes
  • Conduct remote and on-farm network debugging and issue resolution, collaborating on root cause analysis and implementing systematic improvements
  • Develop comprehensive scalability plans for our global network of systems and devices, aligned with ambitious international growth objectives
  • Leverage AI-driven network optimisation and automation to ensure operations scale efficiently with expansion plans
  • Leverage AI-driven network optimisation and automation to ensure operations scale efficiently with expansion plans
  • Configure and maintain load balancers, network switches, routers, and wireless infrastructure for farm deployments

Platform Engineering Design and implement infrastructure-as-code solutions for automated network and platform deployments

  • Define and maintain scalable data pipelines to process multimodal inputs including video, sensor data and structured metadata from network edge devices
  • Build internal tools, diagnostics and platform APIs that empower product delivery teams to operate reliably and self-serve common workflows
  • Develop automated systems to detect network and platform anomalies, including connectivity issues and ingestion breakdowns, with escalation workflows
  • Work cross-functionally with Computer Vision, DevOps and Product colleagues to align platform capabilities with product goals and ensure reliable integration points
  • Optimise platform architecture for high availability and fault tolerance through resilient patterns and failover mechanisms that complement network redundancy
  • Lead the development of infrastructure for deploying and monitoring edge applications and services across the distributed network
  • Collaborate with tech leads on incident response, architectural reviews and decision-making to drive continuous improvements in platform reliability

We would love to meet you if you have all or some of these requirements:

  • Understanding of networking protocols: TCP/IP, BGP, OSPF, VLAN, STP, LACP
  • Experience with switches/routers from Cisco, MikroTik, Netgear, Ubiquiti (or equivalent)
  • Experience with wireless deployments (Wi-Fi 6/6E) and resilient WANs (Starlink, cellular backup)
  • Experience with PoE systems and fibre: PoE+/PoE++, extenders, CAT5/5e/6 cabling, single/multi-mode fibre
  • Experience with IoT gateways and messaging: BLE gateways, MQTT
  • Understanding of storage/compute for edge AI: local storage for model training, ZFS, RAIDs, NFS
  • Experience with security controls: firewalls, VPNs, NAT gateways; understanding of zero-trust and ACLs; experience with Keycloak and NGINX reverse proxy
  • Experience with Python and FastAPI; understanding of data/messaging systems: Kafka, MySQL, MongoDB, PostgreSQL
  • Experience with containers and orchestration: Docker; Kubernetes networking and service mesh; RKE2
  • Experience with streaming protocols: RTMP, WebRTC, HLS, MPEG-DASH
  • Experience with monitoring/telemetry: Prometheus, Grafana, Alertmanager, Thanos; ELK; Jaeger; custom exporters
  • Experience with CI/CD and automation: Jenkins, GitLab, Sonatype Nexus, Terraform, Ansible, Argo CD
  • Experience with cloud platforms: AWS (primary), with GCP/Azure exposure
  • Experience with MLOps/data tooling: DVC, MLFlow, Airflow, Dagster, CVAT, Weights & Biases; data lakes/warehouses

What We Can Offer You Up to 65k p.a. depending on experience and location Flexible working Inclusive and relaxed company culture: we welcome everyone, we encourage you to be yourself and dress as you like Exposure to state-of-the-art technologies A young and international work environment Travel within the UK & potentially into the US and LATAM A chance to work with well-respected experts, including AI and robotics We are committed to equality of opportunity for all staff and applications from all individuals are encouraged regardless of age, socioeconomic background, disability, sex, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief and marriage and civil partnerships.

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