Location: Hybrid - Milwaukee WI
Compensation: Base salary listed plus bonuses
Position Summary
The Director of Network Services is responsible for leading the day-to-day operation, provisioning, maintenance, and expansion of a carrier-grade fiber network. This individual will oversee Network Operations, Service Delivery, Provisioning, and Technical Operations while ensuring exceptional network availability, customer satisfaction, and operational excellence.
This is a highly technical leadership position requiring extensive experience with Cisco and Juniper routing platforms, carrier Ethernet, optical transport, circuit turn-ups, service provisioning, and metro/backbone fiber ring architecture. The ideal candidate is a "player-coach" who has progressed from hands-on network engineering into leadership and remains technically proficient enough to mentor engineers, troubleshoot complex issues, and guide network expansion initiatives.
Key Responsibilities
Leadership & Operations
- Lead and develop Network Operations, Provisioning, and Technical Services teams.
- Foster a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and operational excellence.
- Establish KPIs, operational dashboards, SOPs, and escalation procedures.
- Provide executive leadership during major service interruptions and customer escalations.
- Coordinate cross-functional efforts with Engineering, Construction, Field Operations, Sales Engineering, and Customer Success.
Network Operations
- Oversee the operation of a carrier-grade IP and optical network supporting enterprise, carrier, and wholesale customers.
- Ensure maximum network availability and reliability across metro and backbone infrastructure.
- Manage planned maintenance windows, change management, and incident response.
- Lead root cause analysis (RCA) efforts following significant outages.
Circuit Turn-Up & Service Delivery
- Oversee customer circuit activations from engineering design through production.
- Manage Layer 2 and Layer 3 service provisioning.
- Validate routing, VLAN assignments, optical connectivity, and customer acceptance testing.
- Coordinate provisioning activities across engineering, field technicians, NOC, and customers.
- Ensure timely delivery of new customer services while maintaining SLA commitments.
Provisioning & Network Expansion
- Lead provisioning teams responsible for:
- Customer circuit activation
- Carrier Ethernet services
- IP service deployment
- VLAN implementation
- Transport provisioning
- Backbone capacity upgrades
- Oversee network growth initiatives including:
- Adding new POPs
- Expanding metro fiber rings
- Backbone augmentation
- Optical transport integration
- Network redundancy improvements
Technical Leadership
Provide technical guidance on:
- Cisco routing platforms
- Juniper routing platforms
- MPLS
- BGP
- OSPF
- Carrier Ethernet
- DWDM and optical transport
- Metro Ethernet
- Layer 2/Layer 3 services
- IP routing
- Fiber transport networks
- Serve as the highest technical escalation point for complex provisioning, routing, and transport issues.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience.
- 10+ years of carrier networking experience.
- 5+ years of leadership experience managing Network Operations or Network Engineering teams.
- Extensive experience with Cisco and Juniper networking platforms.
- Strong understanding of:
- BGP
- OSPF
- MPLS
- Carrier Ethernet
- Metro Ethernet
- IP Routing
- DWDM/Optical Transport
- Fiber backbone infrastructure
- Proven experience leading circuit turn-ups and customer service activations.
- Experience provisioning enterprise and carrier services.
- Strong understanding of metro ring architecture and network resiliency.
- Experience supporting mission-critical production environments.
- Excellent customer communication and executive presentation skills.
Preferred Qualifications
- Juniper JNCIP/JNCIE certifications.
- Cisco CCNP or CCIE certifications.
- Experience with wholesale fiber providers, CLECs, or regional ISPs.
- Experience working with optical transport platforms such as Ciena, Nokia, or Adtran.
- Knowledge of network monitoring and management platforms.
- Familiarity with OSS/BSS and service provisioning systems.
- Experience with automation and network scripting is a plus.
Leadership Competencies
- Technical leadership with the ability to mentor engineering teams.
- Strong operational and strategic decision-making skills.
- Customer-first mindset with exceptional communication abilities.
- Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced carrier environment.
- Collaborative leadership style with a focus on continuous improvement.
Ideal Background
Successful candidates will likely come from organizations such as regional fiber providers, wholesale carriers, CLECs, transport network operators, or broadband providers where they have led carrier-grade network operations involving Cisco and Juniper infrastructure, service provisioning, circuit turn-ups, and fiber network expansion.
**Broadstaff, LLC., provides equal employment opportunities to all qualified individuals without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, pregnancy, age, national origin, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, genetic information, or any other protected classification protected by federal, state or local laws.
Pay: $140,000.00 per year
Experience:
- Network Carrier: 10 years (Required)
- Network Operations/Network Engineering Leadership: 5 years (Required)
- Cisco and Juniper platform: 5 years (Required)
- optical transport platforms (Ciena, Nokia, Adtran, etc): 2 years (Preferred)
Work Location: Hybrid remote in Milwaukee, WI 53209
