Senior Technical Advisor, Network Resilience

About Ofcom

Ofcom is the regulator for the communications services that we use and rely on each day. We make sure people get the best from their broadband, home phone and mobile services, as well as keeping an eye on TV and radio.

Our culture is clear – we live by our values: Empowerment; Excellence; Collaboration; Agility and Respect. These define how we work to deliver our purpose, now and in the future. The behaviours which support these values set the path for a fully inclusive and innovative culture at Ofcom.

We focus not only on what we do, but how we do it. We pride ourselves on being an organisation of people who genuinely care about helping others.

About the team you’ll be part of

This role sits within Ofcom’s Network and Communications Technology Team (N&C Tech). The N&C Tech team in Ofcom includes technologists across the areas of network infrastructure, resilience, and security topics, and range of wireless and wireline technology contexts. The team supports initiatives across the rest of Ofcom as well as having its own objectives in the areas of ensuring reliable and secure networks and communications services in the UK.

The N&C Tech team are a part of the Network and Communications Groups, with responsibilities in telecoms, postal sectors and digital markets. The N&C Group sits alongside other directorates including: Spectrum, Broadcasting and Media, Online Safety, Strategy, Economics, and Legal.

The Purpose of the Role

As society has become increasingly dependent on communications services, and telecommunications technologies and infrastructure continue to change at a rapid pace, Ofcom needs technical expertise and market experience in the telecommunications industry in order to support Ofcom in its policy work as well as monitoring the state of play in the industry as well as individual communications providers.

The purpose of this role (Senior Technical Advisor, Network Resilience) is to help maintain and improve the reliability of communications networks and services in the UK by using your technical expertise to support Ofcom’s colleagues from all the other directorates in achieving our goals together.

Your Key Responsibilities

The successful candidate will be able to demonstrate and communicate technical insights to non-technical people, help develop and write guidance documentation on these topics so that Ofcom’s communications network & service resilience regulation is effective, appropriate, and measurable.

The focus of this role is to improve adoption of architecture & design ‘good practice’ measures for telecommunications network infrastructure & service providers with the aim of achieving appropriate levels of reliability. A mix of pro-active assessment and re-active incident assessment will require a fairly broad technical understanding across: fixed, mobile, voice/VoIP/IMS, and IP/MPLS/transport networks & services.

The role includes keeping up to date with new technology evolution and implementations, to update guidance for communications providers, and assess whether they have built their networks & services in a robust, reliable, and secure way.

Working alongside other members of the N&C Tech team, you will be key in supporting the roll out of a network resilience assurance programme to ensure that Communications Providers follow good network architecture & design practices for service availability & reliability.

This role will require you to provide technical expertise and help continue to evolve Ofcom’s guidance on network technologies & resilience mechanisms, network topologies, operations, and processes. This is in support of Ofcom’s policy work so that the regulation of network resilience is effective and appropriate to end user needs and expectations, ensuring that they can benefit from new technology innovation in communications delivering a wide range of consumer and business services.

You will also have the opportunity to collaborate across other areas of Ofcom, such as market research, to ensure our insights and evaluation are consistent with Ofcom’s wider work.

What you’ll need to be successful in this role:

Technical Knowledge, Skills and Experience

Whilst some telecoms technologies are long established, new & innovative technologies continue to emerge. The way these new technologies are configured & managed also continues to evolve to match the increasing consumer demand for broadband capacity and a better quality of experience. These include the rollout of fibre & other gigabit-capable technologies, wireless access networks (both 3GPP & non-3GPP-based), transition from PSTN to VoBB/VoLTE/VoNR and other IP telephony services, evolution of network functions to virtualised cloud-native architectures, and a wide range of software defined/controlled & automated network elements.

Essential Skills/Experience

Technical knowledge and experience

• A comprehensive understanding of the technical design and operation of fixed and mobile telecoms networks and services, including how the technical architecture and operation of networks affects their delivery.
• Good understanding of telecoms network architecture & design of current and emerging technologies including several of these: 4G, 5G, SIP/IMS, VoLTE, fixed-broadband, Voice over broadband, Signalling & VoIP, IP Interconnects, content delivery networks, migration to Cloud-native Virtual Network Functions, software defined networks
• Good understanding of the internet suite of protocols, networking, routing, DNS
• Good understanding of diagnosing network/service failures and assessing designs and processes to determine if there are flaws or negligence
• Good understanding of the factors impacting on the quality of experience and reliability of fixed and/or mobile services
• Experience with evaluating technical risks and identifying reasonable and appropriate control measures
• Maintaining an ongoing awareness and understanding of emerging telecoms technologies, including via: ongoing training, industry liaison & participation in industry bodies, and identifying, commissioning, and managing specific external technical research projects
• Experience across network resilience management domains in a telecommunications or related context (strategy; governance and risk management; response, recovery and resumption of services; situational awareness; testing)

Communication and team working skills

• Writing high quality documentation for a variety of different audiences, including technical and non-technical, ranging from internal, public, and government, with the ability to convey complex technical, economic, and policy information
• Excellent communication skills, including clear and effective presentation skills to both internal and external audiences
• Experience of building and maintaining strong and effective stakeholder relationships and building consensus among colleagues from own and other organisations
• Ability to demonstrate strong written, verbal, and presentation communication capabilities

Desirable Skills/Experience

• Good understanding of IP/MPLS, MPLS VPNs, QoS/prioritisation principles, transmission technologies
• Worked in a communications provider, technology-based consultancy, or vendor for a number of years

Qualifications and Accreditations

• Relevant professional qualifications associated with the technical skills referenced above
• SC clearance or the ability to attain it