Network Engineer (Contract)

Era4 develops, owns and operates AI infrastructure across the UK, powered by renewable energy. Converting legacy industrial and energy sites into modern data-centre facilities, Era4 is combining brownfield regeneration opportunities with cleaner, efficient, scalable compute capacity for healthcare, research, finance, enterprise, and public-sector organisations

Initial 6 month contract.

Must be able to start on 20th July or 3rd August. (These dates are fixed)

Competitive day rate.

Role Summary

We are seeking a hands on Freelance Data Centre Network Engineer to support the delivery and operation of high-performance networking underpinning a next-generation AI infrastructure platform.

This role focuses on data centre networking, routing, automation, and reliability, ensuring that GPU compute, storage, and platform services operate efficiently at scale. You will collaborate closely with platform engineering, infrastructure, and AI teams to deliver stable, high performance networking services.

Key Objectives:

• Support deployment and operation of data centre network fabrics across compute and storage environments.
• Ensure reliable, low-latency connectivity for AI/GPU workloads.
• Troubleshoot and resolve network and infrastructure performance issues.
• Improve automation, configuration management, and operational processes.
• Contribute to monitoring, alerting, and capacity planning across the network stack.
• Produce clear documentation and support knowledge transfer.

Key Responsibilities:

• Configure, manage, and troubleshoot data centre networking environments.
• Support routing and switching across BGP, OSPF, VLANs, and VRFs.
• Work with modern data centre architectures (e.g., leaf-spine, EVPN/VXLAN).
• Collaborate with platform and infrastructure teams to enable secure, scalable connectivity.
• Implement and support network automation using tools such as Python, Ansible, or Terraform.
• Contribute to monitoring, observability, and incident response processes.
• Document configurations, processes, and changes for operational handover.

Required Experience:

• In-depth experience designing, deploying and supporting enterprise or data centre networks.
• Excellent knowledge of TCP/IP, routing and switching protocols (BGP, OSPF) and modern data centre architectures (EVPN/VXLAN, leaf-spine).
• Experience with Cisco, Arista, Juniper or similar networking platforms.
• Strong troubleshooting skills across network infrastructure and Linux-based systems.
• Experience with network automation and Infrastructure as Code.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes/container networking and network security, segmentation and firewall integration.
• Exposure to IPv6, Segment Routing (SRv6), InfiniBand/RDMA and high-performance networking technologies.
• Experience supporting AI, GPU or HPC infrastructure environments is advantageous.
• Excellent communication, documentation and stakeholder engagement skills.

Why Join Era4:

You’ll be joining a mission-driven start-up building critical national infrastructure, where operational excellence directly enables growth. This role offers high visibility with leadership, real autonomy, and the chance to shape how a next-generation company operates at scale.

Diversity & Inclusion: 

Era4 is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.