The RoleThis Senior Manager leads the Strategic Engagement and Response Team (SERT), within Enterprise Repair. The role drives critical projects across the organization and leads the team, handles the most critical, chronic, and executive-visible customer service issues. It owns the highest-tier (4th and 5th level) escalations and executive escalation resolution and tracking, drives chronic circuits to permanent resolution, and represents the Repair organization to customer and internal executives. It also program manages the team's automation and AI goals: increasing touchless tickets (tickets resolved without manual intervention), delivering Agentic AI (AI agent) solutions for customers, growing revenue through managed operations services (Ops as a Service) and advancing Customer Experience initiatives, with regular executive updates on progress and alignment to organizational priorities.
Location and ScheduleThis is a full time remote/work from home position in the US. Must be available for any shift, including nights, weekends, and holidays. The center that this position supports works on a 7x24x365 operational basis.
The Main Responsibilities1. Executive Communication- Represent Repair with customer and internal executives during critical escalations, setting expectations and communicating through resolution.
- Lead executive bridges and communications, including status updates, briefings, RFOs and remediation commitments.
- Communicate escalation, chronic circuit, project and risk updates to leadership and account teams.
2. Project and Program Management- Lead cross-functional projects, including Ops as a Service, Customer Experience and automation initiatives.
- Own roadmaps, priorities, milestones, UAT, production readiness, rollout, adoption and executive reporting.
- Drive corrective actions across Engineering, Field Operations, NOC, Provisioning, Sales and third-party carriers.
3. Executive and Highest-Tier Escalations- Serve as Repair's point of contact for executive escalations from customers, Sales, Account Management and senior leaders.
- Act as the final operational tier for 4th and 5th level escalations, balancing customer impact, cost and risk. May participate in rotational 24x7 on-call support.
- Own escalations from intake through closure, including lessons learned and follow-up actions.
4. Chronic Issues and Process Improvement- Lead SERT in resolving critical, chronic and executive-visible customer issues.
- Own the chronic circuit program, including identification, criteria, tracking and permanent resolution.
- Lead root cause and trend analysis using repeat trouble, MTTR and failure data to correct systemic issues.
- Define and improve escalation and communication processes, including SLAs, RACI, SOPs, runbooks, playbooks and KPIs.
- Drive continuous improvement and proactive actions to prevent repeat issues.
5. Automation and AI- Set automation and AI goals, including increasing touchless tickets.
- Drive Agentic AI and other AI solutions from use case through implementation and adoption.
- Translate operational pain points and escalation data into automation opportunities, including auto-ticketing, diagnostics, chronic detection, notifications and closure automation.
- Partner with development and product teams to prioritize solutions based on MTTR reduction, savings, fewer repeat issues and improved customer experience.
- Measure and report ROI and operational impact.
6. Leadership and People- Lead escalation, chronic circuit, executive carrier escalation and process/automation resources directly or through a matrix.
- Set team goals aligned with organizational priorities.
- Coach and develop employees and build bench strength for high-pressure escalation work.
- Build AI and automation capabilities across the team.
- Foster a culture of ownership, resilience and continuous improvement.
- Represent Customer Repair in cross-functional leadership forums.
What We Look For in a CandidateMost Critical Skills for Success - Executive-level communication: can face a frustrated customer executive or a senior internal leader, give a clear and honest status, and leave them confident in the plan.
- Command of escalations: takes charge of a crisis bridge, makes decisions with incomplete information and pulls the right resources across the organization quickly.
- Project and program delivery: runs several cross-functional projects at once, with clear scope, owners, milestones and executive reporting.
- Proactive, data-driven problem solving: uses trends and root cause analysis to fix the system, not just the ticket, and stops repeat issues before customers feel them.
- Process discipline: builds processes, SOPs and KPIs that hold up under pressure and enforces them consistently.
- Automation and AI vision: sees where automation, AI and Agentic AI solutions can remove manual work, and turns that into requirements, delivery and measurable results.
- Leadership under pressure: keeps a high-performing team focused, developing and resilient through demanding escalation work.
Required - Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Telecommunications, Business or a related field, or equivalent experience
- 10+ years in telecom network operations, service assurance or customer repair, with 5+ years in leadership
- Deep knowledge of circuit-based and IP services (Ethernet, Wavelength, MPLS/IP VPN, DIA, TDM/legacy) and the repair lifecycle
- Proven success handling executive-level customer escalations, including leading bridges and communicating directly with customer and internal executives
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including writing executive briefings and RFOs (Reasons for Outage) and presenting to senior leaders
- Proven project management experience leading cross-functional initiatives to on-time delivery
- Experience defining and running operational processes and KPIs
- Experience leading or sponsoring automation, AI or software delivery in an operations setting
- Strong root cause analysis skills and comfort using data to drive decisions
Preferred - Hands-on experience with AI, generative AI or Agentic AI (AI agent) solutions in operations or customer service
- PMP or equivalent project management certification
- Familiarity with Agile delivery, backlog management and UAT
- Experience growing revenue through managed services or operations-as-a-service offerings
- Experience leading Customer Experience (CX) initiatives
- Lean, Six Sigma or ITIL certification
- Data analysis skills (SQL, Power BI/Tableau)
- Experience managing third-party carrier and LEC escalations
CompensationThis information reflects the anticipated base salary range for this position based on current national data. Minimums and maximums may vary based on location. Individual pay is based on skills, experience and other relevant factors.
Location Based Pay Ranges:
$129,639 - $172,852 in these states: AL, AR, AZ, FL, GA, IA, ID, IN, KS, KY, LA, ME, MO, MS, MT, ND, NE, NM, OH, OK, PA, SC, SD, TN, UT, VT, WI, WV, and WY.
$136,121 - $181,494 in these states: CO, HI, MI, MN, NC, NH, NV, OR, and RI.
$142,603 - $190,137 in these states: AK, CA, CT, DC, DE, IL, MA, MD, NJ, NY, TX, VA, and WA.
Lumen offers a comprehensive package featuring a broad range of Health, Life, Voluntary Lifestyle benefits and other perks that enhance your physical, mental, emotional and financial wellbeing. We're able to answer any additional questions you may have about our bonus structure (short-term incentives, long-term incentives and/or sales compensation) as you move through the selection process.
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What to Expect NextBased on your job application information you may be given the opportunity to complete a video interview immediately after applying. This will include a set of questions for you to record a response to in addition to Game Challenges. Completion of this video interview is a requirement in order to be considered for our open position. Now not a good time? No worries, we will also send you an email with a link to complete the video interview. We strongly recommend that you complete this within 5 days of your application date.
Requisition #: 343978
