Neil McRae left his chief network strategist post at Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (HPE) Juniper Networks to join broadband firm CityFibre.

McRae will join the British company as its new chief technology information officer (CTIO), replacing John Franklin in the role.

McRae's move to CityFibre was first reported by TelecomTV on Tuesday afternoon (December 9).

McRae leaves Juniper after almost three years in the now-HPE owned firm, with which he had a prior relationship while working as chief architect for BT, a major Juniper partner and customer.

The exec stayed in the UK as opposed to working with the US-based Juniper on its home turf. His tenure saw the release of a UK government white paper on AI innovation in which McRae pushed for a priority on building out British talent as opposed to building out network backbones.

London-based CityFibre was formed in 2011 and is described as an alternative network (alt net) broadband provider that builds and operates its own fiber optic network.

The company's network currently passes more than 4.6 million premises, putting it slightly behind Virgin Media O2’s full-fiber footprint of around 8 million premises passed. Both still trail BT Group subsidiary Openreach, which passes more than 21 million premises with fiber.