Network Team Lead

Who we areIlkari is a privately-held start-up based in Dublin, Ireland. We deliver hyper-private scale innovation and technology to safeguard and secure data, enabling true data sovereignty even as the pace of change accelerates. Our best-in-breed sovereign technology delivers privacy and control over where companies' data resides, where it flows, and how it's accessed.
We're here to rewrite the story of data sovereignty
- empowering innovators, pioneers and visionaries to make their mark. We believe the sky is not the limit. We strive for the perfect balance of simplicity and excellence in everything we do, and we're looking for people who are ready to join our journey and rewrite the story of data sovereignty.
Role overviewThe Network Team Lead is a hybrid role based at our office in the tech park, Málaga. We're looking for a hands-on to lead the development and operation of Ilkari's network engineering capability across datacentre, cloud, customer, and corporate environments.
This role combines strong technical leadership with emerging people management responsibilities, supporting the recruitment, onboarding, and development of a new network engineering team while remaining actively involved in the design, implementation, automation, and operation of the network estate.
Working closely with Architecture, Infrastructure, Platform, Security, Support, Service Delivery, and the Delivery Manager, the Network Team Lead will help evolve our Network Reliability Engineering (NRE) capability by embedding automation, observability, testing, and operational resilience into everything we build and operate.

What you'll do
Lead and support a multisite Network Engineering team, providing technical direction, clear priorities, and day-to-day leadership while supporting recruitment, onboarding, and capability development.
Design, implement, operate, and continuously improve enterprise, cloud, datacentre, and customer network services, ensuring high availability, scalability, security, and operational resilience.
Drive the adoption of Network Reliability Engineering (NRE) principles by improving automation, network testing, monitoring, observability, configuration management, and operational standards.
Promote infrastructure-as-code and network automation using technologies such as Ansible, Python, and GitOps principles to improve consistency, reduce manual effort, and minimise operational risk.
Strengthen operational readiness by ensuring robust monitoring, synthetic testing, capacity management, and validation processes are in place before production changes and customer onboarding.
Support product delivery squad models by ensuring network engineering capacity and expertise are effectively assigned across products, enabling reliable delivery and consistent technical standards.
Partner with Support, Infrastructure, Platform, Security, and Change teams to improve incident response, reduce recurring issues through structured problem management, and continuously improve network reliability.
Support customer onboarding and new cloud deployments by ensuring network services are operationally ready, documented, tested, and supportable before go-live.
Work with the Delivery Manager to align network priorities with delivery objectives, supporting estimation, dependency management, resource planning, and predictable execution.
Collaborate closely with Architecture and Security to co-create secure, scalable, and maintainable network solutions that support both technical and business objectives.
Contribute to maintaining the Network Engineering skills matrix, identifying development opportunities, and supporting continuous improvement across the team.
What are we looking for7+ years of enterprise, service provider, cloud, or datacentre networking experience.
Previous experience providing technical leadership or leading small engineering teams.
Minimum Cisco CCNP Enterprise (or equivalent enterprise networking certification).
Strong experience across routing and switching (BGP, OSPF, EVPN, VXLAN desirable).
Experience supporting cloud networking within OpenStack, Proxmox, Kubernetes, VMware, or similar environments.
Strong understanding of firewalls, VPNs, load balancing, network segmentation, high availability, and security best practices.
Experience with network automation using Ansible, Python, APIs, Git, Infrastructure-as-Code, or similar tooling.
Experience implementing network monitoring, observability, telemetry, and synthetic testing platforms.
Strong operational experience across Incident, Problem, Change, Capacity, and Operational Readiness processes.
Experience supporting customer-facing production environments.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Network Engineering, Telecommunications, Information Technology, or a related discipline is preferred.
CCNP Enterprise or equivalent is required; CCIE or cloud networking certifications would be advantageousStrong hands-on expertise in enterprise, datacentre, and cloud networking, including BGP, OSPF, r