Lead Network Architect

Job Title: Lead Network Architect

Job Type: Contract (1 Year+)

Location: Dubai (On-site)

Role Summary:

The Lead Network Architect is accountable for defining, owning and continuously evolving end-to-end network architecture, ensuring it delivers a resilient, secure and scalable foundation that enables business growth, operational excellence and exceptional customer and colleague experiences. This role establishes the architectural vision, standards and governance for network services across the Group, translating business strategy and technology direction into clear, future-ready design principles and scalable blueprints. It ensures that the network environment is predictable, high-performing and secure by design, while addressing legacy complexity and enabling sustainable transformation.Acting as the design authority for network architecture, the role drives consistency, alignment and long-term integrity across all initiatives, partners and environments ensuring that architectural decisions are data-driven, outcome-focused, and aligned to Group priorities.

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Group Network Architecture Ownership - Accountable for defining, owning and continuously evolving the end-to-end network architecture across Group, ensuring it supports business growth, operational resilience, and a high-quality customer and colleague experience.
• Target-State Architecture & Evolution - Define and maintain the target-state network architecture, ensuring it remains aligned to business strategy, technology direction and emerging risks, and evolves in a controlled and scalable way over time.
• Architecture Design Authority - Act as the design authority for all network architecture decisions, ensuring alignment to defined standards, patterns and long-term architectural principles across all initiatives and environments.
• Stability, Resilience & Performance by Design - Ensure the network architecture delivers high availability, resilience and predictable performance, addressing systemic weaknesses, technical debt and architectural inconsistencies.
• Standardisation & Scalable Design - Define and enforce standardised architecture blueprints across:
• Retail stores, offices and distribution centres
• WAN / SD-WAN and internet edge
• LAN, segmentation and Wi-Fi
• Cloud and hybrid connectivity
• Security-by-Design Integration
• Embed security principles into network architecture by design, in close partnership with Information Security, ensuring alignment with segmentation, Zero Trust and secure access models.
• Architecture Governance & Compliance - Establish and enforce architecture standards, guardrails and governance, ensuring all delivery (internal and third-party) aligns to the defined target state and approved design patterns.
• Operational Feedback & Continuous Improvement - Translate operational insights and incident trends into architectural improvements, enhancing stability, supportability and service quality across the Group.
• Capacity & Future Demand Planning - Define and maintain a forward-looking network capacity and performance strategy, ensuring the architecture supports business expansion, peak demand and evolving digital capabilities.
• Vendor & Partner Architecture Oversight - Provide architectural oversight across strategic vendors and partners, ensuring solutions align to Organizational standards and avoiding fragmentation or vendor-driven design decisions.
• Observability & Measurable Outcomes - Define and embed network observability, telemetry and performance standards, with clear KPIs for availability, performance and user experience.
• Network-as-Code & Automation Governance - Define governance for network automation and Network-as-Code, ensuring controlled, scalable and auditable change across the environment.
• Stakeholder Alignment & Decision Enablement - Partner with Technology, Security and Business stakeholders to drive alignment, support decision-making, and ensure architecture enables business outcomes.

Core Knowledge and Experience:

• 10+ years of experience in networking, with significant experience in architecture leadership roles across large, distributed, multi-country environments.
• Proven ability to define and govern scalable network architectures across retail, logistics, corporate and cloud environments.
• Strong architecture-level expertise across:
• Cisco (Meraki, Catalyst, SD-WAN)
• Network Access Control (ISE)
• Firewalls (Fortinet / Cisco)
• SASE / SSE architectures at scale
• LAN / WAN / Wi-Fi design and segmentation
• Cloud & Hybrid Networking (preferred)
• Experience with Azure/AWS networking patterns, hybrid connectivity and integration with enterprise cloud platforms.
• Strong understanding of secure network design principles, including segmentation, Zero Trust and integration with enterprise security controls.
• Experience defining and enforcing architecture standards, design patterns and governance frameworks, including participation in ARB/TDA forums.
• Practical understanding of Terraform and network automation, with the ability to define governance and operating models.
• Experience working with and influencing managed service providers and strategic technology vendors, ensuring alignment to architectural standards.
• Strong ability to influence senior stakeholders, drive alignment across multiple teams, and operate effectively in complex organizational environments.
• Ability to translate technical architecture into measurable business outcomes, with a focus on stability, scalability, performance and user experience.