What are the responsibilities and job description for the Network Assurance Leader (Sr Manager or Director, based on exp) position at FIRSTLIGHT?
Position Summary
The Manager or Director, Network Assurance is a senior leader responsible for setting strategic direction and driving operational excellence across the organization’s Network Assurance, Change Management, and Tier 2 engineering functions. This individual brings a strong balance of operational leadership and technical depth, leading major incident response, improving service reliability, strengthening change governance, and advancing monitoring and automation capabilities that reduce risk and improve customer outcomes. The role demands a decisive leader who can align operational priorities with enterprise goals, build a culture of accountability and continuous improvement, and serve as a trusted partner to operations, engineering, customer-facing teams, and senior leadership. Leveling between Sr Manager and Director will be based on the candidate’s demonstrated scope of leadership, strategic influence, organizational impact, and ability to lead through other leaders.
Strategic Leadership & Core Responsibilities
Service Reliability, Incident Leadership, and Operational Excellence
- Own network availability, impairment reduction, and reliability outcomes across core network and voice services, aligning operational priorities with the highest business and customer impact risks.
- Lead or oversee major incident response, providing clear command, prioritization, and decision-making while ensuring effective Tier 2 engagement, containment, escalation discipline, and resolution standards.
- Ensure timely, high-quality Root Cause Analyses (RFOs), lead post-incident reviews, and drive corrective actions that reduce repeat incidents and improve long-term operational performance.
- Protect Tier 2 capacity by balancing reactive and proactive work, promoting a culture of accountability, learning, and continuous improvement across operations and engineering.
- Maintain oversight of SLA performance, reporting, and associated financial exposure, partnering across teams to reduce avoidable impacts through stronger reliability and execution discipline.
Change Governance, Monitoring, and Risk Reduction
- Own and enforce change management standards, risk assessment, and approval processes that reduce change-related incidents and improve execution quality across maintenance activities.
- Lead the evolution of monitoring, alerting, and automation capabilities in partnership with internal teams and vendors, improving signal-to-noise ratio, expanding proactive detection, and increasing event automation where appropriate.
- Identify systemic issues, operational trends, and control gaps, translating those insights into measurable reliability improvements and stronger risk governance across the network environment.
Cross-Functional Leadership and Organizational Influence
- Influence and align with NOC Operations, Engineering, Sales, Customer, and Senior Mgmt stakeholders to ensure clarity on priorities, accountability, and service-impacting risks.
- Provide clear executive communication during and after major incidents, translating technical issues into concise operational and business implications.
- Build strong cross-functional relationships that enable coordinated action, better decision-making, and sustained focus on service quality and customer outcomes.
Qualifications & Experience
- Progressive leadership experience in network operations, network assurance, or engineering within a service provider or other complex network environment, with demonstrated success leading major incident response and driving operational maturity.
- Experience with root cause analysis, change management practices, network monitoring platforms, and service performance disciplines that improve reliability and reduce repeat incidents.
- Broad technical understanding of IP networking, optical & packet transport, and voice services, with the ability to engage credibly with engineering teams across multiple technical domains.
- Strong decision-making ability in high-pressure environments and proven skill influencing cross-functional teams and driving accountability without direct authority.
- Clear, concise communication skills, including the ability to translate technical issues for executive audiences and build trust across operations, engineering, and customer-facing teams.
- Demonstrated ability to identify systemic issues, develop practical improvements, and support sustainable operational performance through strong analytical leadership.
Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related field preferred; equivalent experience and relevant industry certifications are also valued.
Salary : $100,000 - $160,000