Senior Optical Transport Engineer

Location

This is an onsite role located either in Mt Laurel, NJ or Denver, CO.

About the job you’re considering

The Senior Engineer, Long Haul Wave is an experienced optical transport professional responsible for delivering backbone wavelength services from initial design through customer turn-up. This role owns the complete lifecycle of a wave, including feasibility analysis, end-to-end path design, provisioning across multiple optical platforms, validation, testing, and final customer acceptance.

This is a single-owner delivery model. Instead of handing work between separate design, provisioning, and testing teams, the engineer is responsible for the entire circuit across every network segment, including metro ingress, the national backbone, and metro egress. The engineer remains accountable until the service has been successfully validated and accepted.

Your role

• Design and engineer end-to-end backbone wavelength services, including feasibility studies, route selection, optical path design, reach validation, and spectrum planning.
• Perform wavelength assignment, optical spectrum optimization, and selection of transponders, muxponders, and line-side hardware based on service requirements.
• Provision and turn up wavelength services across multi-vendor optical transport networks, including Nokia and Ciena platforms.
• Configure, integrate, and maintain optical network services while ensuring consistency across vendor boundaries and transport technologies.
• Validate optical performance through power verification, performance testing, error-free burn-in, and service acceptance testing prior to customer handoff.
• Troubleshoot complex network, optical, and service-layer issues, including OSNR, dispersion, span loss, framing errors, timing issues, and alarm conditions.
• Collaborate with field operations, network operations centers (NOC), engineering teams, and vendor support organizations to resolve network issues and escalations.
• Maintain accurate engineering documentation, circuit records, implementation details, service inventories, and as-built network documentation.
• Ensure compliance with operational procedures, engineering standards, and customer acceptance criteria throughout the service delivery lifecycle.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives by identifying automation opportunities, enhancing provisioning workflows, and contributing to operational procedures and MOPs.

Your skills and experience

• 10+ years of hands-on experience engineering, provisioning, or supporting DWDM and optical transport networks in a carrier or large-scale service provider environment.
• Strong understanding of optical transport technologies, including DWDM, ROADM architectures, wavelength planning, optical amplification, regeneration, OSNR, dispersion, and optical power budgets.
• Hands-on experience provisioning and troubleshooting services on optical transport equipment from at least one major vendor, with the ability to work across multiple vendor platforms.
• Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot end-to-end circuits across multiple network segments while isolating faults within complex multi-vendor environments.
• Strong documentation skills and the ability to work directly with customers, operations teams, field personnel, and vendor support organizations throughout the service delivery process.
• Direct experience with Nokia 1830 PSS, PSD, PSI-M, and related optical transport platforms.
• Direct experience with Ciena 6500, Waveserver, and RLS optical platforms.
• Experience supporting long haul or backbone optical transport networks.

Nice to have

• Familiarity with optical network management and orchestration systems.
• Experience performing optical service turn-up, customer acceptance testing, and production implementations.