Position SummaryThe Manager of Network Engineering is a hands-on technical leader responsible for the design, implementation, reliability, scalability, and ongoing optimization of the company's fiber-to-the-home broadband network. This role leads a small but highly skilled engineering team supporting core, transport, access, aggregation, and customer-facing network infrastructure. In a growing telecommunications company the position requires both strategic planning and practical execution, balancing long-term network architecture with day-to-day operational needs.
Key Responsibilities- Lead, mentor, and develop the network engineering team, including hiring, onboarding, coaching, performance management, workload prioritization, and professional development.
- Own the engineering design, configuration, deployment, and lifecycle management of core, edge, transport, aggregation, and access network platforms supporting FTTH services.
- Develop and maintain standards, methods of procedure, network diagrams, configuration templates, change controls, and operational documentation.
- Plan and execute network expansion, capacity upgrades, resiliency improvements, and performance optimization initiatives based on subscriber growth, traffic trends, and business priorities.
- Partner closely with Network Operations, Outside Plant, Field Operations, Construction, IT, Customer Experience, Product, and OSS/BSS teams to deliver reliable broadband services.
- Oversee escalation support for complex incidents, outages, maintenance windows, and chronic network issues, including root cause analysis and corrective action plans.
- Ensure monitoring, alerting, backup, disaster recovery, and incident response practices support service availability, customer experience, and internal service-level targets.
- Evaluate and manage vendor, carrier, and equipment manufacturer relationships, including technical support, roadmaps, renewals, and product recommendations.
- Support budgeting, forecasting, procurement planning, equipment standardization, and engineering resource allocation for network growth and maintenance.
- Promote network security, compliance, redundancy, documentation discipline, and operational best practices across all engineering activities.
Required Qualifications- Seven or more years of progressive experience in network engineering, service provider networking, telecommunications, broadband, ISP, or related infrastructure environments.
- Three or more years of experience leading engineers, technical teams, projects, or cross-functional network initiatives.
- Strong understanding of IP networking, routing, switching, transport, broadband access, subscriber services, and high-availability network design.
- Experience with FTTH technologies and architectures, including GPON, XGS-PON, NG-PON2, Ethernet transport, aggregation networks, and broadband service delivery.
- Hands-on experience with carrier-grade routers, switches, optical transport, access platforms, firewalls, DHCP, DNS, CGNAT, monitoring platforms, and network automation or configuration management tools.
- Ability to troubleshoot complex production network issues and lead incident response under time-sensitive conditions.
- Demonstrated ability to translate business needs into technical plans, standards, projects, and measurable operational outcomes.
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to explain technical topics clearly to executives, peers, vendors, field teams, and customer-facing groups.
Preferred Qualifications- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Network Engineering, Information Technology, Telecommunications, or equivalent practical experience.
- Professional certifications such as CCNP, CCIE, JNCIP, JNCIE, Nokia NRS, MEF, ITIL, or equivalent vendor-specific credentials.
- Experience implementing network automation, telemetry, configuration backup, version control, observability, or lifecycle management practices.
- Familiarity with OSS/BSS integrations, provisioning workflows, IP address management, subscriber authentication, service activation, and customer premise equipment lifecycle.