Unified Communications Engineer

Salary: £50,000 - £60,000 per annum

Employment type: Permanent

Hours per week: 37

Reporting into: Head of IT Operations

Department: IT

Click here to read the full job description and view our excellent benefits here

This role operates primarily on a remote working arrangement that will require little to no travel into our UK sites. You might very occasionally be expected to attend sites for meetings. Our working model arrangements are a non-contractual benefit so please note that an Arden work location is added to our employment contracts.

About Arden University :

We are an aspirational and multi-award-winning university, delivering rapid growth with ambitious plans to disrupt the HE sector through our passion for innovation and digital education. Our vision is to become the first-choice university for career-focused lifelong learners worldwide, ensuring that everyone, everywhere can access higher education.

There has never been a more exciting time to join Arden University, as we expand into new disciplines, forge worldwide partnerships, and expand our locations.

About our Department :

This Unified Communications Engineer role sits within the IT Infrastructure team as part of the wider IT Department. The Team is responsible for the design, development and support of the organisation's IT Infrastructure.

The wider IT team is made up of around 60 employees with a vast range of skills from Software Development to IT Operations and IT Security. Our IT Department values employee development and we have lots of great examples of employee progression and promotions within the team.

About the Opportunity:

As a Unified Communications (UC) Engineer at Arden University, you will play a pivotal role in delivering and enhancing the communication technologies that support our students, academics, and professional services teams across multiple campuses and digital learning environments.

You will be responsible for the design, support, maintenance, and continuous improvement of the University's unified communications platforms, including Microsoft Teams, Teams Phone with Azure Session Border Controller (SBC) integration, synchronous video technologies for teaching and learning, and emerging omni-channel communication services. Working closely with IT and business stakeholders, you will ensure these platforms remain secure, reliable, scalable, and aligned with the University's strategic objectives.

The role combines technical expertise with a service-focused approach, ensuring seamless collaboration, communication, and engagement across the organisation. You will also contribute to the ongoing development of the underlying network infrastructure that supports these critical services, helping to deliver an exceptional digital experience for both colleagues and students.

Reporting to the Head of IT Operations, this is an exciting opportunity to shape the future of communications technology within a modern, innovative university committed to flexible and accessible education.

About You:

Essential Skills / Experience

• Supporting Microsoft Teams, Teams Phone, Direct Routing, and enterprise voice solutions.

• Administration of Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD).

• Strong knowledge of unified communications technologies, including VoIP, SIP signalling, RTP/SRTP media flows, and real-time communications.

• Management of PSTN connectivity, dial plans, call routing, number management, and voice service configuration.

• Working with Session Border Controllers (SBCs) and telephony integrations.

• Diagnosing, troubleshooting, and resolving complex voice, video, and real-time communication issues.

• Incident management, service restoration, problem management, and root-cause analysis within communications environments.

• Strong understanding of Microsoft Teams architecture, Teams Phone configuration, cloud voice workloads, and connectivity models.

• Interpreting call quality analytics, telemetry, QoS metrics, and service performance data.

• Strong understanding of networking principles relevant to unified communications, including QoS/DSCP, bandwidth management, latency, jitter, packet loss, VLANs, and MOS scoring.

• Knowledge of firewall and NAT behaviour, network path analysis, and port and protocol requirements for real-time communications.

• Collaboration with network teams to resolve end-to-end performance and connectivity issues.

• Working with telecommunications providers, platform vendors, and third-party partners to resolve complex technical issues.

• Administration and support of conferencing and collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom.

• PowerShell scripting and automation skills.

Why Arden:

At Arden, you will become a part of a passionate and dedicated team who are committed to removing unnecessary barriers to learning and making education more accessible. Our people work hard to ensure our students journeys are the best they can possibly be, as such we want to reward our people with fantastic benefits. Employees benefit from:

• 30 days holiday + bank holidays on-top, and even a Christmas closure!

• A generous Aviva pension plan, company contributions starting from 7%

• BUPA Cash Plan

• Private Medical Insurance coverage (applies to certain job roles)

• Access to Perkbox benefits

• Study any Arden course for free, with a discount for all family and friends

• Plus, other  excellent benefits

• Our ‘Golden Ticket’ which allows you to gift anyone in your life a free Arden education
  

Our Values:

Stand out, Progressive, Accessible, Resourceful, Kindness, reflect who we are as an institution, a team and as individuals. If they also reflect you and you are excited by the chance to be the driving, creative force within a growing business, we want to hear from you.

There has never been a more exciting time to join Arden University, as we expand into new disciplines and locations.

Closing Date: 16th June (Midnight)

We reserve the right to close this vacancy before the specified closing date should we receive sufficient applications or in order to respond to business needs. In order to avoid missing an opportunity to apply please submit your application as early as possible.

If you are a current Arden student or have an upcoming course with us, you are not eligible to apply for Student Experience roles due to a conflict of interest related to system access.

Equity, Diversity & Inclusion:

Arden University is proud to be a Disability Confident Employer. This means that if you have a disability, as defined by the Disability Equality Act 2010, you may be guaranteed an interview if you meet the essential criteria for the role.

If you wish to be considered under this scheme, you can indicate via the application form below. By doing so, you are also consenting for this information to be shared with the hiring team. For more details on what qualifies as a disability under the Disability Equality Act 2010, please refer to  the guidance here .

As an Equal Opportunity Employer we celebrate diversity and are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. Therefore, we make sure that our recruitment and selection processes never discriminate based upon people's age, disability, gender, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, sexual orientation, or other personal circumstances, and actively welcome applications from all groups.

Sponsorship statement:

Please be aware that some roles may not meet the points requirement for a sponsored Skilled Worker visa, or fulfil the criteria we have for providing sponsorship.  However we welcome applications from candidates who do not currently have the right to work in the UK but may be eligible for a visa through an alternative route.