Network Operations Engineer I

Are you looking to make an impact on a quickly growing company that has a commitment to improving our communities and encourages fresh ideas while providing a great work/life balance?  LS Networks is a rapidly expanding provider of high-speed internet services, founded in the Portland area, with the mission of bringing our fiber-based services to rural, underserviced areas.

We are searching for a Network Operations Engineer I to add to our growing team. The Network Operations Engineer is responsible for the operational engineering and analysis during both the provisioning of services, as well as the operations of the LS Networks service delivery network. The scope of responsibility for this role is related to planning, design, installation, and configuration of network infrastructure during service delivery, as well as ongoing monitoring, troubleshooting, and facilitating the repair of customer and core network services.

This is a full-time salaried exempt position, with a starting salary of $75,000 - $95,000 annually, depending on experience.

Location: Hybrid within our service territory.

We are constantly seeking enthusiastic and innovative professionals to join the LS Networks team. We value dedicated professionals who strive to create excellent customer experiences and believe in our company’s mission to bring high-speed broadband and network reliability to traditionally underserved communities throughout the Pacific Northwest.

We absolutely believe in taking care of our employees and offer the following benefits:

• Complete medical & dental coverage starting at 90% employer-paid premiums for single coverage.
• Our safe harbor 401(k) plan is available to employees on day 1, and includes a 100% fully vested employer match of up to 4% of your compensation.
• 8 paid holidays, flexible "Take What You Need" PTO and paid family leave, 16 hours of paid volunteer time!
• LS Networks employees can also take advantage of local employee store passes, local sporting event tickets and much more!

Essential Functions

The Provisioning role is comprised of service validation, as well as the implementation, test and turn-up of new capacity and customer services.

The validation phase focuses on ensuring that all technical aspects of the service order are gathered, confirmed/validated, and documented.

• Review and confirm customer requirements against capability and capacity.

• Review/create Operational Service Diagram(s) to represent the service delivery.

• Reserve and document equipment and ancillary services, such as: hardware, physical plant, IP addresses, Port Assignments etc.

• Engage with appropriate groups, as needed to determine steps to meet service requirements.

• Design services within and across regions for Ethernet, Internet and TDM services.

• Design accurate, complex network solutions requiring routing protocols, such as: OSPF and BGP, including layer 2 Carrier Ethernet, MPLS and Layer 3 configurations.

• Support Order Management assisting with technical coordination of customers, including status updates and technical inquiries.

• Ensure validation is complete for handoff to other team members if required.

The provisioning phase focuses on delivery of services to meet customer expectations, based on the Validation work completed previously.

• Stage and configure equipment for deployment and installation by Field resources.

• Provide technical service activation, change, and disconnect of the following:

         o Internet (BGP and Routed IP Services)

         o Ethernet (ELINE & ELAN)

         o TDM (DS-1 through STS-192)

         o SIP (with and without IADs)

         o May assist Engineering with Wavelength deployments as well.

         o UCaaS Services (DHCP, POE, VLANs, Multicast and Call Features/Functions)

         o Work with Order Management, Project Managers, Field resources and 3rd-Party providers to coordinate the installation, test, and turn-up of new circuits.

• Certify circuit performance using Y.1731 and RFC 2544 standards with EXFO/JDSU test sets.

• Finalize service documentation, update inventory, configure OAM and Monitoring systems.

The Operations role is the ongoing monitoring, troubleshooting, and facilitating the repair of customer and core network services.

• Provide troubleshooting and repair support for customer and core network services, as a member of the Network Operations Center (NOC).

• Collaborate with other members of the NOC, Field Resources, Engineering and Infrastructure (OSP) teams in solving complex problems as needed.

• Understand, troubleshoot and repair Ethernet, IP, SIP, TDM, DWM, Routing/Switching, MPLS, Voice/UCaaS, Wireless and Security services, as well as customer and core network issues.

• Understand and remotely troubleshoot Fiber Optic and 3rd-Party Network services.

• Coordinate and lead customer and core network repair events with Field Technicians, Engineers, customers, contractors, and 3rd-Party Network service providers.

• Respond diligently, deliberately, and timely to customer inquiries regarding service issues.

• Provide proactive customer notification of service and core network issues, as well as ongoing updates as needed.

• Document all work performed in a comprehensive ticketing and document management systems.

• Monitor, operate, administer and react to Network Management System (NMS) events for customer and network faults.

• Use lab environments to diagnose network issues or provide network performance reviews.

• Schedule, document, lead and implement maintenance activities when necessary.

• Identify, diagnose, and document underlying architecture and support issues for problem resolution, root cause analysis (RCA), reason for outage (RFO) and Service Level Agreements (SLA) reporting.

• Identify and document new or enhanced LS Networks best practices and processes where needed.

• Participate in an On-call rotation responding to service-related issues, and related restoration activities.

Key Responsibilities

• Network Support – Maintains the network support process and checks that all requests for support are dealt with according to agreed procedures. Ensures network configurations are applied to meet operational requirements in line with agreed procedures. Uses network management software and tools to investigate and diagnose network problems, collect performance statistics, and create reports.

• Incident Management – Ensures that incidents are handled according to agreed procedures. Prioritizes and diagnoses incidents. Investigates causes of incidents and seeks resolution. Escalates unresolved incidents. Facilitates recovery, following resolution of incidents. Documents and closes resolved incidents. Contributes to testing and improving incident management procedures.

• Problem Management – Initiates and monitors actions to investigate and resolve problems in systems, processes, and services. Determines problem fixes and remedies. Collaborates with others to implemented agreed remedies and preventative measures. Supports analysis of patterns and trends to improve problem management processes.

• Availability Management – Analysis of service and component availability, reliability, maintainability, and serviceability. Contributes to the availability management process and its operation. Performs defined availability management tasks. Ensures that services and components meet and continue to meet their agreed performance targets and service levels. Implements arrangements for disaster recovery and documents recovery procedures. Conducts testing of recovery procedures.

• Service Level Management – Performs defined tasks to monitor service delivery against service level agreements and maintains records of relevant information. Analysis of service delivery performance to identify actions required to maintain or improve levels of service. Initiates and reports on actions to maintain or improve levels of service.

• Change Control – Assesses, analyses, develops, documents, and implements changes based on requests for change. Ensures that operational processes are in place for effective change control. Develops, configures, and maintains tools to manage and report on the lifecycle of change requests. Identifies problems and issues and recommend corrective actions.

Qualifications

• Typically, a bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent experience.

• Typically, four (4) or more years in related field.

• Typically, four (4) or more years of experience working in a mission critical 7x24x365 Operations Center or Service activation group.

• Typically experienced with two (2) or more disciplines, such as: compute and storage, communications and collaboration, network services, risk management, process management.

• Typically, four (4) or more years of experience in a carrier/service provider environment working with a variety of distributed service offerings including MPLS, IP Routing, Carrier Ethernet, Unified Communications, Management Services and Security services.

• Experience with and understanding of Static, OSPF, BGP and IS-IS routing.

• Experience with and understanding of Ethernet traffic types, VLANs, Queuing, LAGs, and 802.1q.

• Experience with and understanding of Wireless networks, Voice/Unified Networks and Security Services a plus.

• Experience with network and system diagnosis and troubleshooting, using configuration management and testing toolsets, as well as monitoring and management software solutions.

• Candidates should be comfortable in customer-facing situations, as well as internal mentoring roles. Has strong interpersonal and organization skill sets; be comfortable in a dynamic, fast paced environment, and understand that flexibility and accountability feed directly into customer satisfaction in both Voice, Video and Email communication methods.

• ITIL v3/4 Certification a plus.

• Nokia NRS I Certification

• Nokia NRS II Certification (preferred)

• Cisco CCNA/CCDA; CCNP/CCDP; CCIE (considered)

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