About This Role:
At Biogen, our manufacturing operations rely on robust, secure, and highly available technology infrastructure to support the delivery of life-changing therapies. We are seeking a Network/Systems Support Engineer to join our Manufacturing IT team in Athlone.
In this role, you will be responsible for supporting and continuously improving our Manufacturing Control Network (MCN) environment, ensuring reliable operation of critical infrastructure that supports manufacturing, laboratory, warehouse, and shop-floor systems. You will work closely with Manufacturing, Automation, Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, Quality, and external vendors to maintain a secure, compliant, and highly available environment operating 24/7.
This is an excellent opportunity for an experienced infrastructure professional who enjoys troubleshooting complex systems, driving continuous improvement, and working within a regulated manufacturing environment.
Given the site's 24x7 operations, you may be required to provide on-site, off-hours, or on-call support, ensuring that our manufacturing processes run smoothly and efficiently.
This role requires working on site for 5 days per week in Athlone.
What You'll Do:
Infrastructure Operations & Support
- Support the day-to-day operation and maintenance of manufacturing network and systems infrastructure.
- Manage and troubleshoot Windows and Linux servers, virtualization platforms, network services, monitoring solutions, and backup systems.
- Act as a key escalation point for complex infrastructure incidents and lead root cause investigations through resolution.
- Ensure reliable connectivity and performance for manufacturing and business-critical systems.
- Administer and troubleshoot LAN/WAN infrastructure, including managed switches, routers, and wireless access points, across the MCN and manufacturing floor.
- Manage and support firewalls and network segmentation between CORP, MCN, and DMZ zones, including rule review, change implementation, and connectivity troubleshooting.
- Configure and maintain Layer 2/Layer 3 networking, including VLANs, trunking, inter-VLAN routing, spanning tree, link aggregation, and dynamic routing protocols (e.g., OSPF).
- Perform packet-level and flow analysis (e.g., Wireshark, NetFlow/sFlow) to diagnose latency, packet loss, and intermittent connectivity faults.
Engineering & Continuous Improvement
- Implement infrastructure changes in compliance with change management, cybersecurity, and GxP requirements.
- Maintain and improve server, network, virtualization, and platform environments.
- Identify opportunities to enhance reliability, resilience, maintainability, and operational efficiency.
- Support technology refreshes, upgrades, and lifecycle management activities.
- Design and implement network changes, such as VLAN and IP addressing schemes, firewall rule changes, and switch and firmware upgrades, using documented change and validation processes.
- Maintain network configuration baselines, backups, and version control for network devices.
- Support network resilience and redundancy, including high-availability pairs, redundant uplinks, and failover testing.
- Support secure remote and vendor access (VPN, jump hosts, Citrix, MFA) into controlled manufacturing environments.
Monitoring & Compliance
- Monitor infrastructure health, availability, capacity, security, and performance.
- Maintain technical documentation, operational procedures, and support records.
- Contribute to audit readiness through adherence to validation, compliance, and documentation requirements.
- Support controlled manufacturing environments by ensuring systems remain secure and compliant.
- Configure and tune network monitoring (e.g., SNMP, syslog, NetFlow, and tools such as SolarWinds, PRTG, or Zabbix), including alerting thresholds and capacity trending.
- Perform regular vulnerability, patch, and firmware management for network devices in line with cybersecurity standards (e.g., IEC 62443, NIST).
- Maintain current network diagrams, IP address management (IPAM) records, and asset inventories.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Partner with Manufacturing, Automation, Quality, Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, and vendor teams.
- Provide technical input on infrastructure design, operational support, and risk mitigation strategies.
- Participate in incident reviews, project delivery activities, and technical planning initiatives.
Operational Support
- Participate in an on-call support as required to support a 24/7 manufacturing environment.
- Provide off-hours support during critical incidents, maintenance activities, and infrastructure upgrades when necessary.
- Act as Tier 3 escalation for network faults and lead major incident troubleshooting through to root cause analysis and post-incident review.
Who You Are:
You are an experienced infrastructure professional with a strong background in supporting enterprise network and systems environments. You have hands-on experience working with technologies such as Windows and Linux servers, virtualization platforms, Active Directory, networking services, and infrastructure monitoring tools.
You have in-depth, hands-on experience configuring and troubleshooting enterprise switching, routing, and firewall platforms, and you are comfortable using protocol analysis and diagnostic tools to isolate faults at every layer of the OSI model.
You enjoy solving complex technical challenges and are comfortable acting as a key escalation point for critical incidents. You understand the importance of system reliability, cybersecurity, compliance, and change management, particularly within manufacturing, pharmaceutical, biotech, or other regulated environments.
You are a proactive and collaborative team player who can build effective relationships across Manufacturing, Automation, Quality, Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, and vendor teams. Your strong analytical and communication skills enable you to translate technical issues into business impact and drive practical solutions.anslate technical issues into business impact and drive practical solutions.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
- Minimum of 5 years' experience supporting enterprise network and systems infrastructure.
- Strong working knowledge of Windows Server, Linux, VMware or other virtualization platforms, Active Directory, DNS, DHCP, and core networking concepts.
- Strong working knowledge of TCP/IP, the OSI model, subnetting, VLANs, routing and switching, NAT, and network services (DNS, DHCP, NTP).
- Hands-on experience configuring and supporting enterprise network equipment (e.g., Cisco, Juniper, Aruba, Fortinet, Palo Alto, or equivalent).
- Experience with firewall administration, access control lists, and network segmentation.
- Experience with network monitoring and diagnostic tools (e.g., Wireshark, SNMP-based monitoring, ping/traceroute/port testing).
- Experience with remote access technologies (VPN, Citrix, MFA).
- Hands-on experience troubleshooting complex issues across servers, networking, storage, identity services, security tools, and infrastructure platforms.
- Experience collaborating across infrastructure domains, including servers, virtualization, storage, backup, networking, cybersecurity, and operations teams.
- Strong analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills, with the ability to work effectively across technical and non-technical teams.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
- Experience supporting infrastructure within pharmaceutical, biotech, manufacturing, GxP-regulated, or other highly regulated environments.
- Experience with OT/ICS networks and industrial protocols (e.g., Modbus/TCP, EtherNet/IP, OPC UA/DA, PROFINET), including the Purdue model and IEC 62443 concepts.
- Experience with network automation and scripting (PowerShell, Python, Ansible) for configuration management and reporting, and with cybersecurity best practices.
- Industry certifications such as CCNA/CCNP, Fortinet NSE, Palo Alto PCNSA/PCNSE, CompTIA Network+/Security+, or equivalent.
- Experience with network access control (e.g., 802.1X, NAC), wireless design and site surveys, and structured cabling and fibre standards.
- Experience supporting historian, SCADA, MES, or DCS connectivity (e.g., OSI PI).
- Familiarity with software-defined networking or network visibility tools for OT environments.
Job Level: Professional
Why Biogen?
We are a global team with a commitment to excellence, and a pioneering spirit. As a mid-sized biotechnology company, we provide the stability and resources of a well-established business while fostering an environment where individual contributions make a significant impact. Our team encompasses some of the most talented and passionate achievers who have unparalleled opportunities for learning, growth, and expanding their skills. Above all, we work together to deliver life-changing medicines, with every role playing a vital part in our mission. Caring Deeply. Achieving Excellence. Changing Lives.
At Biogen, we are committed to building on our culture of inclusion and belonging that reflects the communities where we operate and the patients we serve. We know that diverse backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives make us a stronger and more innovative company, and we are focused on building teams where every employee feels empowered and inspired. Read on to learn more about Biogen.
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, race, color, national origin, ancestry, ethnicity, religion, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information or any other basis protected by federal, state or local law. Biogen is an E-Verify Employer in the United States.
