Position Overview

Network Connex is seeking a hands-on Program Director to lead a large-scale turnkey fiber infrastructure program. This role will be responsible for overall program execution from engineering through permitting, materials, construction, ILA coordination, testing, closeout, and customer acceptance. The successful candidate must be a practical operator who can lead at scale while staying close enough to the details to identify issues early and drive them to resolution.

The Program Director will serve as the single point of accountability for program performance and will lead a cross-functional delivery model that includes engineering, project management, field operations, scheduling, safety, quality, materials, subcontractor management, document control, and customer reporting.

Role Purpose

The Program Director will build and manage the operating rhythm required to deliver multiple routes and workstreams in parallel. The successful candidate will bring strong program governance, disciplined project controls, executive-level customer communication, and practical field execution experience in telecom, OSP, ILA, or utility infrastructure.

Execution Mindset

This is not a passive oversight role. The Program Director must have a true doer mindset and be comfortable moving between executive-level customer communication and detailed execution management, including schedule recovery, resource alignment, engineering-to-construction handoff, field coordination, material constraints, testing, closeout, and customer acceptance.

Key Responsibilities

Program Leadership and Governance

• Lead the full turnkey program delivery structure across engineering, OSP, ILA, materials, permitting, construction, testing, closeout, and acceptance.
• Establish and manage the program cadence, including executive reviews, customer updates, internal operating meetings, route reviews, and escalation forums.
• Provide clear ownership of schedule, budget, quality, safety, risk, reporting, customer decisions, and milestone performance.
• Create a program culture focused on accountability, urgency, transparency, and no-surprises communication.
• Personally engage in problem-solving where needed to remove roadblocks, drive decisions, and keep routes, resources, and deliverables moving.

Engineering-to-Construction Execution

• Coordinate engineering release, constructability review, permitting readiness, material availability, and construction start planning.
• Ensure engineering, field, materials, testing, and closeout teams are aligned before routes are released to construction.
• Manage interface points between design, permitting, ROW/access, field execution, splicing/testing, ILA construction, and final turnover.

Schedule, Production, and Project Controls

• Maintain a master program schedule with route-level milestones, dependencies, look-ahead planning, and recovery actions.
• Drive production reporting tied to field progress, constraints, crew loading, material readiness, and customer-controlled decisions.
• Manage risk registers, issue logs, change logs, decision logs, action trackers, and milestone acceptance trackers.

Customer and Stakeholder Management

• Serve as the senior day-to-day customer-facing leader for the program.
• Communicate program status, risks, issues, required decisions, schedule impacts, and recovery plans clearly and professionally.
• Develop strong working relationships with customer leadership, engineering, construction, operations, procurement, and acceptance stakeholders.

Financial and Commercial Management

• Manage program performance against fixed-price route or program awards and milestone-based payment schedules.
• Partner with commercial and finance teams to monitor budget, forecast, change management, billing milestones, and margin performance.
• Ensure scope changes, assumptions, exclusions, customer impacts, and required approvals are documented and managed through formal change control.

Safety, Quality, Testing, and Closeout

• Ensure safety and quality expectations are embedded into field execution from the start of the program.
• Oversee inspection, testing, photo documentation, redlines, as-builts, test-result validation, and closeout package readiness.
• Drive acceptance and closeout management as an active workstream, not an end-of-project activity.

Resource and Subcontractor Management

• Plan and scale resources to support concurrent routes, shifting priorities, acceleration, and regional delivery requirements.
• Coordinate internal teams and qualified subcontractors or specialty partners where needed for field execution, restoration, traffic control, splicing/testing, ILA support, or surge needs.
• Monitor resource performance against schedule, production, safety, quality, documentation, and customer expectations.

Materials and Logistics Coordination

• Partner with procurement and logistics teams to support material planning, inventory tracking, staging, release, and shortage forecasting.
• Ensure material readiness is aligned to route readiness, NTP, engineering release, permitting, and construction schedule requirements.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience leading telecom, fiber, OSP, utility, power, civil infrastructure, or large-scale construction programs.
• Demonstrated experience managing multi-route or multi-region deployments with parallel workstreams and executive-level customer reporting.
• Strong understanding of turnkey delivery models, including engineering, permitting/rights coordination, materials, construction, testing, closeout, and customer acceptance.
• Experience managing fixed-price, milestone-driven, or program-based commercial models.
• Ability to lead project managers, construction managers, field supervisors, schedulers, document control, safety, quality, and subcontractor resources.
• Strong schedule management, risk management, issue escalation, and change-control discipline.
• Hands-on execution mindset with the ability to operate above the program while still getting into the details when schedule, quality, materials, or closeout items are at risk.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to brief executive leadership and customer stakeholders.
• Ability to work from the Dallas office and travel as needed for route reviews, customer meetings, site visits, and escalation support.

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct experience with long-haul fiber, high-count cable deployments, OSP construction, splicing/testing, or ILA site construction.
• Experience supporting carrier, hyperscale, utility, or large enterprise infrastructure customers.
• Familiarity with program dashboards, milestone trackers, production reporting, risk registers, GIS/KMZ coordination, and closeout documentation.
• Experience coordinating power, generator startup/testing, energization, commissioning, or ILA acceptance activities.
• Background in emergency restoration, outage response, or 24x7 field escalation environments.
• Bachelor's degree in construction management, engineering, business, or related field preferred; equivalent industry experience will be considered.