Immad Khan

Principal Network and Security Architect, London

Networks in four countries. The automation that keeps them running.

Fourteen years building and securing carrier networks in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the UK, most recently a Telecommunications Security Act remediation in London. I also build the automation that helps them run: a dashboard that turns dozens of alerts into one issue with a suggested fix, and firmware upgrades that check themselves and roll back.

Immad Khan. Co-founder and CTO of Netravix and The Brown Network.

See my work Get in touch

CCIE #56917, HCIE #12309, CISSP, PMP, Azure Architect Expert

Sources6 of 6
Alerts48
Open issues1
P1, core9 alerts, 4 sources

BGP session flapping on core-02

Grouped because every alert points at the same circuit.

  1. Latency rising on core-02 (Zabbix)
  2. BGP neighbour down and up six times (Graylog)
  3. Receive power low on Te0/0/3 (device check)
  4. All on one circuit (NetBox)
Suggested fixMove traffic to the backup path, then replace the degrading optic on Te0/0/3.
Waiting for the engineer on duty

A simulated example of the kind of dashboard I have built. Every name and number is illustrative, and no real network data is shown.

  • Certified
  • CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure #56917
  • HCIE Datacom #12309
  • CISSP
  • PMP
  • Azure Solutions Architect Expert
  • ISO/IEC 27001 Lead Auditor

Career

Fourteen years, four countries, one line of work.

I started by building networks by hand and have spent every year since on bigger, more critical ones. The automation came from doing the same careful checks hundreds of times.

Pakistan2012 to 2021
Saudi Arabia2014 to 2018
Iraq2018 to 2022
United Kingdom2022 to now
  1. 2022 to now
    Principal Network Engineer, G.Network

    Core network lead for peering, capacity and architecture on a 10Gbps-capable full-fibre network. Telecommunications Security Act remediation, a £2M pre-production lab, a Zero Trust perimeter on Cisco Firepower and a 99.99% availability target.

    London, UK
  2. 2021 to 2022
    IP Planning Expert, Asiacell

    Led IP backbone modernisation for 5G with SR-MPLS and EVPN, for an operator with more than 16 million customers.

    Sulaymaniyah, Iraq
  3. 2018 to 2021
    Senior Datacom Engineer, Huawei

    Nationwide IP backbones for tier-1 operators, IP-RAN for LTE expansion and fast reroute for millisecond failover.

    Pakistan and Iraq
  4. 2014 to 2018
    Access Network Engineer, Mobily

    IP and FTTx infrastructure across eight cities for Saudi Arabia's second-largest operator, leading field teams through build and acceptance.

    Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
  5. 2012 to 2014
    IT Support and Network Engineer, Ized Group

    Enterprise routing, switching and firewalls.

    Islamabad, Pakistan

Selected work

Four pieces of work, told properly.

What needed doing, how I went about it, and what changed afterwards.

Case 1

Removing a high-risk vendor under the Telecommunications Security Act

G.Network, London. A 10Gbps-capable full-fibre network passing more than 400,000 premises.

Challenge

UK regulation required high-risk vendor equipment to come out of the core and edge of a live network, without disrupting customers.

Approach

  • A target architecture on Cisco and Nokia
  • Validation in a £2M pre-production lab that I built and run
  • A staged migration with a rollback plan for every step

Result

The programme reached full Telecommunications Security Act compliance while holding the network to its 99.99% availability target.

High-risk vendorCisco and NokiaStaged migration
Old core out, new core in, customers undisturbed.
Cisco ASR9K and NCSNokiaSegment RoutingBGPTSA
Case 2

One dashboard instead of six monitoring tools

My role: designed and built it for a live carrier network, with no third-party licence.

Challenge

Zabbix, SolarWinds, Graylog, NetBox and Cisco FMC each held part of the picture. None of them said what was actually wrong, so the first minutes of every fault went on switching between tabs.

Approach

  • Collect from all five tools, plus direct checks on the live devices
  • Correlate related alerts into a single issue
  • Show the likely cause and a suggested fix on one dashboard

Result

One view of the whole network, with a suggested fix next to each issue instead of a pile of alerts across six tools. It needed no commercial AIOps subscription.

ZabbixSolarWindsGraylogNetBoxCisco FMCLive devices EngineDashboard
Six sources, one engine, one dashboard.
ZabbixSolarWindsGraylogNetBoxCisco FMCSNMP and CLIBuilt with Claude Code
Case 3

Firmware upgrades without the 2am change window

My role: designed and built it, for Cisco and Nokia fleets.

Challenge

Upgrading router and OLT firmware by hand is slow, repetitive and risky. One missed check can take a site down.

Approach

  • Pre-checks on routing, CPU, memory, storage and redundancy
  • Staged waves that stop automatically at the first failure
  • Post-checks compared against the pre-upgrade baseline
  • Automatic rollback and a complete audit trail

Result

Repeatable upgrades that engineers can trust, backed by evidence, with every step logged for change management.

Pre-checkUpgradePost-checkDoneRoll back if any check fails
Every upgrade proves itself before and after.
Cisco IOS XRNokiaPythonChange management
Case 4

Shipping products as a technical co-founder

Netravix. Co-founder and CTO, leading technology and product.

Challenge

Small UK businesses need useful software but can rarely pay for custom builds. We wanted to find out whether a small team building with AI could ship real, dependable products quickly.

Approach

  • The Netravix Product Factory: find evidence of a real problem, build, then ship in the open
  • AI-assisted development with Claude Code, reviewed with a security architect's eye
  • An AI publishing tool I built that drafts the daily Netravix Insights articles

Result

Netrafin, a financial operating system for project-based organisations, and Netralume, disclosure intelligence, are both live. More tools are coming out of the Product Factory, and our client work includes the Vestolife website.

EvidenceBuildShipLearn, then repeat
The Product Factory loop.
Product strategyClaude CodeSecurity review

Inside the dashboard

Forty-eight alerts in. One issue and a fix out.

A failing optic doesn't raise one alert. It raises dozens, in every tool that can see it. This is how the dashboard I built turns them into something an engineer can act on. Scroll through, or pick a step.

How I work

Three rules I build by.

  1. From the lab

    Prove it before it's live.

    Every change to a live network should already have worked somewhere safe. That's why I built a pre-production lab, and why nothing reaches customers until it has passed there.

  2. From the upgrades

    Always keep a way back.

    Automation without a rollback just breaks things faster. The tools I build check before they act, check again afterwards, and undo their own work when the results don't match.

  3. From the dashboard

    Show the fix, not just the fault.

    A list of alerts tells you something is wrong. A good tool also tells you what to do next, with the evidence, so the engineer on duty can act instead of starting from scratch.

Ventures

Two companies, one job: the technology.

Co-founder and CTO, 2026 to now

Netravix

A UK company that builds software for small businesses, alongside network engineering and automation work. I lead technology and product.

  • Netrafin: a financial operating system for project-based organisations, with budgets, commitments and proper double-entry accounts in one place.
  • Netralume: disclosure intelligence, evidenced.
  • Product Factory: small-business tools, built and shipped in the open.
Co-founder and CTO, 2024 to now

The Brown Network

A management consulting firm in Islamabad working on strategy, digital transformation and women's economic empowerment. I own its technology and innovation agenda.

About

Built by hand first, then automated.

I spent my first decade building carrier networks node by node: fibre across eight Saudi cities, national backbones in Pakistan and Iraq, and Segment Routing for one of Iraq's largest operators. That is where the instinct for automation comes from. After doing a job by hand a few hundred times, you know exactly which checks matter.

Now I build the tools that do that work: monitoring that diagnoses instead of just listing alerts, and upgrades that check themselves and roll back on failure. I build much of it with Claude Code. AI makes me faster, but it doesn't replace judgement, so everything gets reviewed as a security architect would review it.

Current rolePrincipal Network Engineer, G.Network
VenturesCo-founder and CTO, Netravix and The Brown Network
CredentialsCCIE Enterprise Infrastructure #56917, HCIE Datacom #12309, CISSP, PMP, Azure Solutions Architect Expert, ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Lead Auditor
FocusNetwork architecture, security, automation and AI
Open toSenior network architecture and automation leadership roles, and advisory work with founders and boards
Based inLondon