Consultant Field Systems Engineer - Global Cloud Networking

Ciena is committed to our people-first philosophy. Our teams enjoy a culture focused on prioritizing a personalized and flexible work environment that empowers an individual’s passions, growth, wellbeing and belonging. We’re a technology company that leads with our humanity—driving our business priorities alongside meaningful social, community, and societal impact.

Ciena Corporation, the Systems Engineer, offers leading network infrastructure solutions, intelligent software, and a comprehensive services practice.

As the customer-facing, the ideal candidate requires a strong understanding of current and future trends in optical networking, software automation, APIs, and customer applications and operations in the Cloud Networking ecosystem. The candidate must be able to perform technical oversight internally to ensure Ciena’s direction aligns with customer needs and work collaboratively with key influencers. This candidate must have a complete understanding of the full software stack and life cycle of the optical equipment, facilities, services, and assurance in our customer's environment.  This includes data networking, data center architectures, interconnectivity, ZTP, persistence strategies, control planes, and automation. 

Must be able to create and communicate complete solutions that add value and differentiates Ciena from our competition. The candidate must be able to develop relationships and align with both internal (PLM, engineering, and services) and external (Customer) organizations, and provide a forward-looking plan that enables technology adoption. In addition, the ability to position Ciena’s value and software leadership in all areas of Data Center solutions, automation, and operations. The ideal candidate would be able to articulate and drive a clear view to PLM and Engineering of the architecture and designs required by this customer environment, and the trends and direction that follow. 

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Acts as the technical lead, working alongside Ciena engineering/design resources to offer the best technical solution for a given opportunity or issue
• Drive engagement and follow-up with engineering teams, product line managers, and product owners on product input, bug fixes, feature enhancements, and new product releases
• Assist with multi-product interoperability testing and validation between Ciena products and other external vendor equipment
• Support Account team with pre and post-sales activities that includes bid responses, quotes, span designs as well as technical presentations, demos, proof of concepts, and new product introductions through a sales cycle, and other engineering Q&A support
• Create and present customer best practices procedures and knowledge transfer sessions
• Capture operational and scale requirements of the customer's environment to automate and accelerate product adoption and deploy technology in their networks.
• Serve as the customer-facing expert for advanced technical collaboration conversations, focused primarily on  product integration, automation, and APIs; be capable of addressing a large majority of customer questions
• Define, create, analyze, and validate scripts, test acceptance plans, and other development and automation tools.
• 25 to 40% of travel will be required to visit GCN customers, as well as domestic and international travel to industry conferences, and Ciena R&D sites.
• Perform other duties as assigned

SKILLS

• In-depth knowledge of network automation, software systems, virtualization, development, and operationalization in the Data Center environment, including Agile development, and DevOps.
• Experience with data models and NBIs such as YANG, CLI, REST, and TL1
• Experience with Python, XML, JSON, YAML, Ansible, and gRPC’s APIs.
• Detailed understanding of Data Center network architectures, DWDM/ROADM, Ethernet, Submarine Networks, and other switching /transport technologies
• Experience in the use of network design tools such as OnePlanner
• Excellent organizational and time management skills due to the dynamic nature of activities; ability to plan, prioritize, execute & follow-up
• Familiar with use of various optical and ethernet technologies and test equipment

DESIRED CHARACTERISTICS

• Strong technical expertise and desire to learn new technologies
• Ability to build strong cross-functional relationships with customers, partners, and internal teams.
• Must be able to work collaboratively with the customer in a high-touch, dynamic environment
• Must be able to work collaboratively with Ciena R&D, Engineering, and PLM
• Superior verbal and written communication skills

EDUCATION a