Senior Network Administrator at SARAO - South African Radio Astronomy Observatory

• The purpose is to implement and support organizational-wide network services, and directives from the Security team and maintain networking documentation. The candidate will monitor and support network equipment, do performance monitoring on existing networks, and provide second-line support to the helpdesk. The candidate will contribute to design, planning, ongoing improvements and assist with forecasting future requirements.

Key Responsibilities:

• Maintain and manage, in conjunction with networking team, networking switches and routers conforming to requirements from Networking Security Team
• Develop, manage and maintain documentation of the system architecture.
• Develop and maintain database of existing networking equipment, location, serial number, model, configuration management.
• Manage, in conjunction with networking team, maintenance of networking kit, spares provisioning, stores replacement, capacity planning, optics, line cards etc.
• Maintain and manage, in conjunction with networking team, servers both physical and virtual (Proxmox based on KVM) running Linux and Microsoft Windows Server Edition.
• Maintain and manage, in conjunction with networking team, server room level networking and availability.
• Respond, in conjunction with the networking team, to break-fix issues on networking equipment.

Key Requirements:
Qualification:

• National Diploma Engineering/Information Technology 5+ years; OR
• B.Eng / B.Sc Hons (Comp Sci/Engineering or related field) with 3+ years

Experience:

• Working as a technical resource on network infrastructure
• Experience in network operations and service support
• Experience working with helpdesk as a support technician
• Experience monitoring and responding proactively to network and IT issues
• Experience monitoring, implementing and updating network security services
• Experience working with virtual networks, namespace management
• Experience interpreting and updating network designs

Knowledge:

• Documenting network architecture at various OSI levels.
• Operating systems experience: Windows, Linux (Debian / Ubuntu), OS X
• Networking in virtual environments in particular KVM via Proxmox Enterprise Virtualisation as well as containerised environments such as Docker
• Networking security best practice; Firewall configuration and management.
• Maintenance and operation life cycle of Networking Equipment.
• Identity and Access Management, Single Sign-on and Federated Identity (IdP and SP)
• ITIL frameworks and ICT operations

Additional Notes:

Skills/ Ability/ Competencies

• Good working knowledge of TCP/IP, Routing, DNS, DHCP, OSI Stack, VPN.
• Networking switch and router configuration – Cisco, HPE, Mellanox, Arista
• Experience in networking monitoring tools and support packages.
• Good understanding of Linux operating system, Opensource software and networking tools.
• Well-developed knowledge of systems/services for software/hardware development, how this relates to IT networking, security,
• storage and computing.Strategic thinking and influence
• Initiative and continually brings fresh ideas to the table

Deadline:29th July,2025