Company Description
At Zayo Europe, we’re driven by a bold vision to power the world through connectivity. We’ve built and operated the critical fibre networks that keep businesses, communities, and economies connected. In 2024, we embarked on an exciting new chapter as a standalone company — a milestone that empowers us to innovate, grow, and lead with greater agility. As we continue to evolve, our mission remains clear: to deliver fast, reliable, and scalable infrastructure that fuels the digital world.
Overview
Zayo Europe is seeking a highly capable Solution Engineer to join the London team. This senior individual contributor role significantly influences customer outcomes, technical strategy and commercial success across the United Kingdom and mainland Europe.
The Solution Engineer leads technical discovery, designs advanced network solutions across dark fibre, optical transport, Ethernet, routed networks, cloud connectivity and security-enhanced architectures, and provides structured coaching to Account Executives. This role is a central pillar of the sales process, helping shape opportunities, increase win rates and strengthen customer trust through technical leadership.
Solution Engineers at Zayo also help develop reference architectures, support the Individual Case Basis governance process, work closely with Engineering and Product teams, and act as trusted advisors to enterprise, financial services, cloud, public-sector and wholesale carrier customers.
Why Join Zayo Europe?
Zayo Europe offers an environment designed to attract and retain the strongest Solution Engineers:
- A large-scale fibre and cloud-edge network across the United Kingdom and mainland Europe.
- Exposure to sophisticated designs across dark fibre, coherent optical transmission, high-capacity wavelength services, Ethernet services, routed services, cloud edge connectivity and secure networking patterns.
- High autonomy and influence over customer engagement, technical standards, Individual Case Basis decisions and commercial shaping.
- A structured Solution Engineer operating model, including a dedicated design function for standard work, allowing Solution Engineers to focus on complex opportunities.
- Direct involvement in large enterprise and cloud provider projects.
- A technically mature culture where engineering quality and professional standards are strongly valued.
Key Responsibilities
1. Sales Support and Technical Leadership
- Lead technical discovery, qualification and shaping of customer opportunities.
- Coach Account Executives on Zayo’s services, design principles and customer engagement techniques.
- Drive opportunity progression by translating complex technical topics into clear and compelling narratives.
- Attend customer meetings across all levels, including senior executives.
- Deliver high-quality presentations and proposals across business, technical and operational audiences.
2. Solution Design and Architecture
- Own the design of full end-to-end network solutions across dark fibre, optical transport, wavelength services, Ethernet, routed services, cloud edge connectivity and private networking.
- Produce complete design documentation including diagrams, capacity models, resilience patterns and bill-of-material details.
- Ensure adherence to Zayo’s architecture principles, engineering feasibility rules and operational standards.
- Provide detailed guidance on route diversity, latency requirements, traffic behaviour, cloud integration and future scalability.
- Serve as the technical authority for complex opportunities requiring Individual Case Basis evaluation.
3. Bid Support, Technical Governance and Documentation
- Produce accurate and comprehensive responses for requests for proposal, requests for information and formal tenders.
- Validate technical requirements, dependencies, risks and assumptions prior to submission.
- Translate technical designs into customer-ready documentation suitable for contract signature and delivery processes.
- Identify gaps, uncertainties or risks within customer requirements and ensure these are resolved.
4. Internal Collaboration and Stakeholder Engagement
- Collaborate with the design team for standard solutions while providing governance and escalation support for complex design work.
- Work closely with Engineering, Product, Delivery and Operations to confirm feasibility and ensure design accuracy.
- Maintain detailed design notes, version-controlled documentation and internal system updates.
- Participate in continuous improvement of tools, reference architectures and processes.
5. Technical Culture and Professional Standards
- Maintain broad and current knowledge of industry standards and practices for optical networking, Ethernet transport, routed networks and cloud interconnection.
- Contribute to technical forums, internal architecture reviews and engineering excellence initiatives.
- Demonstrate precision, accuracy, professionalism and reliability in all engagements.
Enablement, Training and Professional Development
Zayo Europe provides a comprehensive enablement and development framework tailored individually for every Solution Engineer.
This includes:
- A structured onboarding programme covering Zayo’s full portfolio, design standards, processes and tools.
- Professional certification support with major vendors including Ciena, Cisco, Juniper, Infinera and Arista.
- Access to Skillsoft for technical, soft-skill and leadership development.
- Regular internal workshops across optical engineering, packet-based networking, cloud interconnection and security fundamentals.
- A structured mentoring programme aligned to Level 7 leadership principles from the Institute of Leadership and Management.
- Defined pathways into Senior Solution Engineer, Lead Solution Engineer, Principal Architect or management positions.
- Quarterly development reviews to ensure long-term growth.
Required Experience and Skills
- Experience in solution engineering, network architecture or technical presales within telecommunications, cloud infrastructure or carrier environments.
- Strong understanding of optical networking, wavelength services, Ethernet transport, routed networks, cloud connectivity and hybrid networking patterns.
- Ability to create accurate design diagrams using Lucidchart, supported by detailed capacity models and design documentation.
- Experience supporting enterprise, public-sector, financial services or wholesale carrier customers.
- Strong communication skills for explaining complex technical topics to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Proficiency in Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel and Word.
- Strong organisational capabilities and ability to operate in a fast-paced environment.
- Constructive collaboration and teamwork skills.
Preferred Experience
- Experience designing high-capacity optical transmission, including coherent optical systems and high-bandwidth wavelength services.
- Familiarity with industry standards governing Ethernet transport, optical transmission and routed networks.
- Experience with cloud networking including dedicated connections into Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform.
- Understanding of security topics including protection from distributed denial-of-service attacks, segmentation and secure edge design.
- Experience with multi-vendor environments including Ciena, Cisco, Juniper, Infinera and Arista.
- Background supporting large-scale enterprise transformations or diversity-focused networking programmes.
Location and Working Pattern
- Primary location: London.
- Hybrid model: typically two to three days per week in the office depending on customer activity.
- Occasional travel across the United Kingdom and mainland Europe.
Equality and Inclusion
Zayo Europe is committed to fostering an inclusive work environment. Applications are welcomed from individuals of all backgrounds and experiences.
Rewards
Competitive compensation including sales incentive plan
Hybrid working
Excellent benefits including health, disability and life insurance
Pension with higher employer contributions up to 8%
Retail and fitness membership discounts
Generous paid time off policy including enhanced paid parental leave, 25 days paid time off, one floating day and two volunteer days off per annum
Employee assistance programs including mental health, wellbeing and medical support
Zayo Europe provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, colour, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, provincial or local laws.
This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.
