Solution Architect - Networking & Security

Solution Architect – Networking & Security Shoreham-by-Sea Flexible hybrid Up to £80,000 (Internal Job Level Reference: Senior Specialist) Focus Group is a £300m-revenue, 1,400-person technology services company backed by Hg Capital. Following our $1bn valuation in 2024, we're scaling rapidly and investing in AI to transform how we operate and how we serve our 30,000 SME customers. As we continue to expand our portfolio through acquisition and organic growth, we're committed to setting new industry standards in managed service excellence. About the role Our Networking and Security team is looking for a Solution Architect to own the technical design of complex customer projects across our SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network), SASE (Secure Access Service Edge), firewall and routing/switching portfolio – and to stay hands-on all the way through delivery. This isn't a role where you hand off a design and move on. You'll translate customer requirements into High-Level and Low-Level Designs, act as design authority on your own projects, and then work alongside our delivery engineers to build, migrate and commission the solutions you've designed – both remotely and on customer sites. It's a genuine blend of architecture and hands-on delivery, with UK site travel and some planned out-of-hours work for change windows. What you'll be doing Owning the end-to-end technical design of multi-site networking and security projects, from pre-sales and solution design right through to customer hand-over Staying hands-on through delivery: personally carrying out configuration, build, migration and commissioning of Cisco, Fortinet and adjacent platforms alongside the delivery team Travelling to customer sites across the UK to lead design workshops, attend kick-offs, run surveys, and complete installation, cabling and commissioning work where needed Producing High-Level and Low-Level Designs, build documents, configuration templates, runbooks and as-built hand-over packs to a customer-facing standard Turning customer requirements and commercial outcomes into deliverable architectures, refining designs as real-world project realities emerge Reviewing engineer-produced configurations, change records and build documents to own the technical quality of everything that reaches the customer Leading and mentoring delivery engineers on projects, supporting their certification paths and development Acting as the senior technical escalation point during build, migration and cut-over phases Explaining design decisions, progress, risks and trade-offs to customers in clear, plain language – no unnecessary jargon Leading pre-sales solution design, using your Cisco and Fortinet expertise to shape and pressure-test proposed approaches Helping set and improve the design and build standards the wider team works to What you'll bring CCNP (Cisco Certified Network Professional) as a minimum Hands-on experience designing, configuring and deploying…