Telecom Expense Program Manager

Company

Alaska Airlines

The Team

Guided by our purpose, core values, and leadership principles, we are creating an airline people love. Our corporate teams set the strategies and operational plans to ensure the success of our company. Whether we use our expertise in accounting, human resources, finance, planning, legal, marketing, or any of our operational divisions, our shared passion for travel and our guests is what motivates us to achieve excellence each day. If you share our passion for creating an airline people love, we want to hear from you.

Role Summary

The Telecom Expense Program Manager is a subject matter expert in telecommunications vendor and expense management, network deployment lifecycle, and connectivity governance for Alaska. This role owns telecom expense management, vendor strategy, financial governance, inventory integrity, and lifecycle management across voice, data, and mobility services while partnering with Finance, Supply Chain, and Network Engineering to optimize spend, improve efficiency, and strengthen resiliency. As an individual contributor, this role uses considerable judgment to manage telecom deployments, support budget optimization and mobile data plan governance, and provide recommendations on telecommunications trends and infrastructure improvements.

Key Duties

• Act as a subject matter expert in telecommunications expense management, vendor management, connectivity governance, and network deployment lifecycle across voice, data, and mobility services.
• Own the full Telecom Expense Management (TEM) lifecycle, including budgeting, forecasting, accruals, invoice validation, dispute management, billing reconciliation, variance analysis, cost allocation, and oversight of third-party TEM providers managing $10M+ in annual spend.
• With minimal direction from leadership, exercise considerable judgment to make decisions within telecom expense, vendor, inventory, and circuit governance processes to optimize spend, improve operational efficiency, strengthen resiliency, and support business and technology objectives.
• Make recommendations to address business challenges and opportunities in telecommunications spend, carrier contracts, network infrastructure, mobile data plans, service utilization, and vendor performance, including opportunities to reduce costs, improve service quality, and eliminate stranded assets or unused or inactive service charges.
• Guide, influence, and coach Finance, Supply Chain, Network Engineering, vendors, and other cross-functional partners to support accurate financial planning, contract negotiation, SLA management, inventory integrity, circuit order governance, deployments, decommissions, and change or disconnect management.
• Deliver reporting, dashboards, and executive-level insights on telecom spend, usage, trends, optimization opportunities, and performance metrics; define and track KPIs such as utilization, cost performance, service quality, and vendor performance.
• Assess telecom providers, market trends, technology changes, and business requirements to inform strategic vendor decisions, quarterly business reviews, escalations, contract rationalization, and improvements to Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines network resiliency and cost effectiveness.

Job-Specific Experience, Education & Skills

Required

• 4 years of experience in telecommunications expense management, accounting, or supply chain supporting Information Technology and telecommunications.
• Bachelor’s degree or an additional two years of relevant training/experience in lieu of this degree.
• Experience with large enterprise (10,000+ users) telecom and mobility carrier contracts, including voice, data, and mobile services.
• Excellent verbal, writing, and presentation skills.
• Strong data analytics and financial modeling skills.
• High school diploma or equivalent.
• Minimum age of 18.
• Must be authorized to work in the U.S.

Preferred

• Understanding of carrier billing, tariffs, services, and fee structures.
• Excellent organization, time management, and follow-up skills.
• Project Management skills.
• Skilled with dashboarding tools (Power BI, Tableau), advanced Excel, and PowerPoint for presentation of complex quantitative data.
• Vendor sourcing / contract negotiation experience.
• Telecom inventory / asset management systems.

Job-Specific Leadership Expectations

Embody our values to own safety, do the right thing, be caring and kind, and deliver performance.

Starting Rate

Salary Range

$99,850 -- $149,800 / year

Bonus

Salary Details

Pay will be based on multiple factors, including and not limited to location, relevant experience/level