Infrastructure Lead Engineer

Lightning Fibre is looking for an Infrastructure Lead Engineer to take ownership of the systems, automation, and observability platforms that power our rapidly growing fibre broadband network.

Why This Role is Different

• You'll own the infrastructure end-to-end, not just a slice of it.
• Your impact will be highly visible across the entire organisation.
• You'll work in a small, trusted team with significant autonomy.
• You'll shape and scale our platforms as the company grows.

This role is not suitable for candidates whose experience has been limited to large, highly siloed enterprise environments or cloud-only DevOps pipelines.

Role Primary Purpose

As Infrastructure Lead Engineer, you will ensure that Lightning Fibre's internal systems, applications, and monitoring platforms run reliably, securely, and efficiently.

You'll manage and automate our FreeBSD and Debian/Ubuntu virtual machines, all hosted on a private cloud infrastructure, while driving better tooling and automation across the company.

A key responsibility is maintaining and enhancing the logging, monitoring and alerting platforms (Grafana, Loki, Prometheus) that collect status and performance data from our core network and customer connections, enabling proactive detection and smooth operational response.

You'll also lead automation initiatives that make the business more efficient, from infrastructure-as-code to Jira/Confluence workflow automation and future private AI/ML anomaly detection models.

How to Apply

Please submit your CV and a covering letter. Applications without a covering letter will not be considered.

Your covering letter should explain

• Why you are suited to working in a small company environment
• Examples of times you have worked independently and taken ownership
• How your sysadmin background equips you to succeed in our FreeBSD/Linux environment

Lightning Fibre was established in 2018. We are a leading local alternative network provider of full fibre broadband in East Sussex. We are headquartered in Polegate and have an existing broadband network in East Sussex. Our broadband network can supply our standard installed customers with anything up to 10 Gigabits in both download and uploads.

We are a community oriented network operator, whose aim is to significantly upgrade our region's broadband infrastructure, providing local jobs and keeping local money in the areas we serve. We are a vital enabler to grow our digital local economy, thereby creating further quality jobs. Lightning Fibre has bold plans for growth and development.

Key task and responsibilities

• Maintain and optimise our FreeBSD and Debian/Ubuntu virtual servers
• Own our monitoring and observability stack (Grafana, Loki, Prometheus, etc.)
• Implement, refine, and support CI/CD pipelines for bespoke internal applications
• Develop infrastructure as code (e.g. Ansible) to improve repeatability and reduce manual intervention
• Automate system administration tasks, deployments, and updates
• Troubleshoot production issues and participate in on call rotation
• Work with development and project teams to design and implement operational requirements from the ground up
• Ensure system security patching, and compliance with internal policies and industry best practices

Requirements

Essential skills:

• Strong experience with FreeBSD and Debian Linux
• Demonstrable ability to work independently and own problems end-to-end
• Proven experience in a DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, or Systems Administration role
• Proficiency with configuration management tools (Ansible, SaltStack, Puppet, or Chef)
• Experience with monitoring and logging stacks (Grafana, Loki, Prometheus, or equivalents)
• Proficiency in at least one scripting language (Perl, Python, or similar)
• Strong troubleshooting skills across systems, networks, and applications
• Understanding of networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, DNS, routing, firewalls)
• Understanding of virtualisation and private cloud platforms (e.g. Proxmox, VMware)
• Experience integrating bespoke or legacy applications into automated workflows
• Familiarity with CI/CD tools (GitLab CI, Jenkins, or similar)
• Knowledge of secure system design and hardening practices
• FreeRADIUS administration or integration experience
• Understanding of TR-069 / TR-181 / TR-369 for CPE device management
• Experience with Jira/Confluence automation
• Exposure to private AI/ML tooling for anomaly detection or data analysis at scale

Benefits we can offer you include

• 22 days' annual leave plus bank holidays, increases by 1 day/year up to 27 days (pro rata).
• A day off for your birthday in addition to annual leave.
• Employee referral scheme - refer a friend for a job and receive a reward if they are successful.
• Free parking.
• Cycle to work scheme.
• Employee discount on Lightning Fibre broadband.
• Healthcare cash plan including reimbursement towards dental, optical and physiotherapy etc.
• Company maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental pay.
• Life assurance policy.