Guildhall School of Music & Drama is looking for an experienced, curious and ambitious Network & Systems Manager to join our Digital, Production & Venue Support (DPVS) team. This is a rare opportunity to take responsibility for an extraordinary technical environment at the heart of one of the world’s leading conservatoires. Guildhall’s students are exceptional young musicians, actors, production artists and makers, and our job within DPVS is to give them the facilities, systems and technical support that allow them to do their best work. Behind that work sits a substantial and increasingly sophisticated digital infrastructure. Across more than 60 performance venues, studios, teaching spaces and classrooms, DPVS operates hundreds of interconnected audio, video, recording and broadcast devices, alongside an equipment inventory worth more than £2 million. We are looking for someone to help us lead, maintain and develop that environment.
The role
As DPVS Network & Systems Manager, you will take day-to-day operational responsibility for the School’s specialist recording, broadcast and audio-visual systems and networks. That includes a large low-latency audio network, Dante Domain Manager, NDI video distribution, networked recording systems, specialist software, and the increasingly complex infrastructure that connects our studios, concert halls, theatres, teaching rooms and production spaces.
You will be somebody who enjoys getting beneath the surface of a system: diagnosing problems properly, understanding why something behaves the way it does, documenting it, improving it and making it more resilient. Just as importantly, this is not an IT role sitting at a distance from the work. You will be part of a busy, vibrant technical department supporting concerts, theatre productions, recording sessions, broadcasts, teaching, research and student-led work every day. You might spend one morning investigating multicast behaviour or a Dante clocking issue and the afternoon working with engineers, academics or students to develop a completely new production workflow. You will work closely with our Recording & AV engineers, venue teams, academic departments and the School’s central IT colleagues, and will have considerable scope to influence how our infrastructure develops in the coming years.
Who we are looking for
We are deliberately interested in people from a wide range of technical backgrounds.
Perhaps you are currently a systems engineer in broadcast or live production and would like to bring that experience into a role with greater continuity, where you can build, refine and take long-term ownership of the systems you work with. Perhaps you have spent years touring and are looking for a little more routine without losing the technical complexity, live performance environment and sense of occasion that attracted you to the industry in the first place.
You might be a broadcast systems engineer, studio technical manager, media-network specialist, AV systems engineer, or someone working in higher education who wants to operate at a much greater technical scale.
We are less interested in where you learned your skills than in what you can do with them.
You will need substantial experience of professional audio, video or broadcast systems and a strong understanding of IP networking in a media environment. Experience with technologies such as Dante, NDI, and network administration will be particularly valuable, as will an understanding of recording studios, production workflows and integrated AV systems.
Knowledge of emerging media-over-IP technologies including ST 2110 would be very welcome. A networking qualification such as CCNA would be useful, but equivalent professional experience is equally welcome.
You should also be comfortable working with young people.
Guildhall is a creative educational environment rather than a traditional corporate network operation. Our systems ultimately exist to enable people to make music, theatre, recordings, films and performances. Being able to explain complex technology clearly, work collaboratively with engineers and academics, and help students understand the systems they are using is therefore an important part of the role.
The environment
DPVS is a large multidisciplinary department bringing together recording, broadcast, AV, sound, lighting, stage, technical production and venue operations. The scale and variety of the work is unusual. Our teams support thousands of recordings and a huge programme of performances and projects every year, ranging from student sessions and teaching activity through to major public concerts, theatre productions, broadcasts and collaborations with internationally recognised artists and organisations.
The technology behind that programme is changing rapidly. Networked audio and video are becoming fundamental to almost everything we do, and this role will be central to determining how that infrastructure develops.
You will be encouraged to question existing workflows, test new ideas and introduce technologies where they genuinely improve reliability, capability or the experience of our students.
You will also help us maintain relationships with manufacturers, integrators and colleagues across the professional audio, broadcast and performing-arts industries, ensuring Guildhall remains connected to current professional practice rather than simply following it.
You will need excellent organisational skills, the confidence to take ownership of complex systems, and the ability to manage several competing priorities in an environment where performances and teaching cannot simply stop because something technical has gone wrong.
Why Guildhall?
You will be working alongside an experienced and enthusiastic technical team, but the ultimate beneficiaries of your work are some extraordinarily talented students at the beginning of their professional careers. A reliable network might mean a student can hear their orchestral recording immediately after a session. A better video workflow might transform how a production is taught or captured. A well-designed system might become the infrastructure behind thousands of performances over the next decade.
We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and particularly encourage candidates who may not previously have considered working within a conservatoire or higher-education environment.
If your experience has been gained in touring, live sound, broadcast, post-production, studios, systems integration, professional AV or another adjacent industry, we would encourage you to look carefully at the person specification rather than assuming that your career path needs to have followed a particular route.
This is a full-time role working 35 hours per week. Some evening and weekend work is required in support of the School’s performance programme, with overtime arrangements applicable.
If you are excited by complex systems, brilliant performances, ambitious students and the idea of helping shape the technical infrastructure of a world-leading performing arts institution, we would love to hear from you.
For further information, please download the Job Information Pack.
For more details regarding the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, please visit http://www.gsmd.ac.uk.
To apply, please click the 'Apply Now' link below. Alternatively, please contact the Corporate Recruitment Unit on 020 7332 3978 (24hr answerphone) quoting GS9320. A minicom service for the hearing impaired is available on 020 7332 3732.
Closing date: Monday 5 October, 12 noon.
Interviews to be held: Week commencing Monday 12 October 2026
Please note that late applications will not be accepted.
