Lead Architect - Network & Security

Grade Level: L3

Location: Karachi

Last date to apply: 9th October 2026

What is Lead Architect – Network & Security?

The Lead Architect – Network & Security is the design authority for all network and network-security work delivered by Jazz Enterprise Solutions' systems integration team, and leads the engineers who deliver it. Customers span enterprise, financial services and the public sector.

The work covers data centre fabrics, enterprise WAN and SD-WAN, next-generation firewalls, network access control and secure edge services. The role owns how those estates are designed, the standards the team designs to, and the technical quality of what finally goes live.

The role is based in Karachi with nationwide delivery coverage and reports to the Head of Delivery – SI, Cybersecurity & Managed Services.

What does Lead Architect – Network & Security do?

Scope and boundaries

• Design authority for network and security delivery for all SI projects. Network and security engineers in the team report through this role.

Architecture and design

• Own the reference architectures, design standards and technical patterns the team works to, and keep them current as OEM roadmaps move.
• Produce and review High-Level and Low-Level Designs, methods of procedure, migration and rollback plans, and as-built records.
• Sign off every network and security design before it goes to implementation.
• Make sure designs meet customer security, audit and regulatory requirements, including State Bank of Pakistan expectations in the financial sector.

Delivery

• Lead complex implementations and migrations end to end: data centre fabric builds, WAN and SD-WAN rollouts, firewall migrations, NAC deployments, secure edge services.
• Plan and run change in live production environments with defined fallback and validation criteria.
• Act as the engineering escalation point for network and security (Tier 3 / Tier 4), and lead root-cause analysis on complex incidents.
• Hand over cleanly into managed services, with runbooks, documentation and a proper knowledge transfer.

Team

• Lead the network and security engineers. Allocate work, manage capacity and skills coverage, and hold the team to the standards the role sets.
• Assess and develop the team, including engineers moving across from connectivity delivery into integration and security work.
• Maintain the skills matrix and drive the certification depth that Jazz's OEM partner tiers depend on.
• Interview candidates for the team and take new engineers through onboarding.

Bid support

• Work with Solutions Engineering on bids. Validate feasibility, effort, resource availability and delivery risk before anything is committed commercially.
• Check bills of quantity and materials for technical correctness and deliverability.
• Provide the network and security input to the delivery gate, and record the technical assumptions that carry into delivery.
• Support customer workshops, proofs of concept and technical presentations where that depth is needed.

OEM and vendor

• Keep working technical relationships with Cisco, Fortinet, Huawei, Palo Alto, F5 and their local partners and distributors.
• Run OEM technical escalations, TAC cases and vendor professional-services engagements on complex programmes.
• Assess new technologies entering the portfolio for fit, supportability and what they mean for delivery.

What success looks like after twelve months

• Reference architectures and design standards published, and actually used.
• Every network and security design signed off before implementation, with exceptions logged rather than absorbed.
• Skills matrix and certification roadmap live, with named owners and dates.
• Technical assumptions recorded on every qualified bid.
• Escalation volume falling, and the causes fed back into the design standards.

Jazz is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate, support, and thrive on diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.Grade Level: L3

Location: Karachi

Last date to apply: HR will share

What is Lead Architect – Network & Security?

The Lead Architect – Network & Security is the design authority for all network and network-security work delivered by Jazz Enterprise Solutions' systems integration team, and leads the engineers who deliver it. Customers span enterprise, financial services and the public sector.

The work covers data centre fabrics, enterprise WAN and SD-WAN, next-generation firewalls, network access control and secure edge services. The role owns how those estates are designed, the standards the team designs to, and the technical quality of what finally goes live.

The role is based in Karachi with nationwide delivery coverage and reports to the Head of Delivery – SI, Cybersecurity & Managed Services.

What does Lead Architect – Network & Security do?

Scope and boundaries

• Design authority for network and security delivery for all SI projects. Network and security engineers in the team report through this role.

Architecture and design

• Own the reference architectures, design standards and technical patterns the team works to, and keep them current as OEM roadmaps move.
• Produce and review High-Level and Low-Level Designs, methods of procedure, migration and rollback plans, and as-built records.
• Sign off every network and security design before it goes to implementation.
• Make sure designs meet customer security, audit and regulatory requirements, including State Bank of Pakistan expectations in the financial sector.

Delivery

• Lead complex implementations and migrations end to end: data centre fabric builds, WAN and SD-WAN rollouts, firewall migrations, NAC deployments, secure edge services.
• Plan and run change in live production environments with defined fallback and validation criteria.
• Act as the engineering escalation point for network and security (Tier 3 / Tier 4), and lead root-cause analysis on complex incidents.
• Hand over cleanly into managed services, with runbooks, documentation and a proper knowledge transfer.

Team

• Lead the network and security engineers. Allocate work, manage capacity and skills coverage, and hold the team to the standards the role sets.
• Assess and develop the team, including engineers moving across from connectivity delivery into integration and security work.
• Maintain the skills matrix and drive the certification depth that Jazz's OEM partner tiers depend on.
• Interview candidates for the team and take new engineers through onboarding.

Bid support

• Work with Solutions Engineering on bids. Validate feasibility, effort, resource availability and delivery risk before anything is committed commercially.
• Check bills of quantity and materials for technical correctness and deliverability.
• Provide the network and security input to the delivery gate, and record the technical assumptions that carry into delivery.
• Support customer workshops, proofs of concept and technical presentations where that depth is needed.

OEM and vendor

• Keep working technical relationships with Cisco, Fortinet, Huawei, Palo Alto, F5 and their local partners and distributors.
• Run OEM technical escalations, TAC cases and vendor professional-services engagements on complex programmes.
• Assess new technologies entering the portfolio for fit, supportability and what they mean for delivery.

What success looks like after twelve months

• Reference architectures and design standards published, and actually used.
• Every network and security design signed off before implementation, with exceptions logged rather than absorbed.
• Skills matrix and certification roadmap live, with named owners and dates.
• Technical assumptions recorded on every qualified bid.
• Escalation volume falling, and the causes fed back into the design standards.

Jazz is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate, support, and thrive on diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

Requirements

What are we looking for and what does it require to be Lead Architect – Network & Security?

Experience and education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or a related discipline.
• 12+ years in enterprise network and network-security engineering, hands-on, including at least three years leading a technical team.
• A track record of delivering complex multi-vendor network and security programmes for enterprise or financial services customers, through to customer acceptance.
• Migrations and technology refreshes executed in live production, with structured fallback planning and minimal disruption.
• Pre-sales exposure: solution validation, effort estimation, bill of materials review, and standing in front of a customer to defend a design.
• Evidence of developing engineers. Mentoring, certification planning, and raising the standard of a team's work.

Technical

• Data centre: Cisco ACI including multi-pod and multi-site, Nexus platforms, VXLAN/EVPN fabrics, data centre interconnect, and the equivalent Huawei architectures.
• WAN and SD-WAN: Cisco SD-WAN and Meraki, Fortinet, Huawei. MPLS, BGP, OSPF, DMVPN, and WAN aggregation at branch scale.
• Security: next-generation firewalls (Cisco FTD/FMC/ASA, FortiGate, Palo Alto, Huawei USG), IPS, WAF, micro-segmentation, secure remote access, DDoS mitigation.
• Access control and identity: Cisco ISE (802.1X, MAB, posture, profiling, TACACS+), multi-factor authentication, directory integration.
• Application delivery and load balancing (F5, Kemp), campus switching and enterprise wireless.
• CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure or Security strongly preferred. CCNP, PCNSE, Fortinet NSE, Huawei HCIP/HCIE or CISSP will be considered alongside demonstrated design authority on comparable work.
• Documentation discipline: HLDs, LLDs, MOPs, migration plans and as-builts that someone else can pick up and use.

Market and domain

• Delivery experience with Pakistani financial services customers: commercial and microfinance banks, insurance, fintech. Their change control, audit and regulatory expectations are not the same as everyone else's.
• Familiarity with primary and disaster-recovery site architectures, segmented environments and regulated network zones.
• Working knowledge of the local OEM, distributor and partner ecosystem.

How you work

• Credible with senior engineers, and able to hold design authority on technical merit.
• Works well across Solutions Engineering, Technical Support & Service Assurance, Delivery Excellence and Supply Chain.
• Explains technical risk and design trade-offs to people who are not engineers.
• Sound judgement on effort and sequencing, and the discipline to raise a problem early rather than absorb it.
• Willing to travel nationwide and to work customer change windows, which often fall outside office hours.

Benefits