About Lumen

Lumen connects the world. We are igniting business growth by connecting people, data and applications – quickly, securely, and effortlessly. Together, we are building a culture and company from the people up – committed to teamwork, trust and transparency. People power progress.

We’re looking for top-tier talent and offer the flexibility you need to thrive and deliver lasting impact. Join us as we digitally connect the world and shape the future.

The Role

The Sr. Lead Engineer specializing in Customer Network Architect is responsible for designing, implementing, and overseeing the end-to-end network architecture that supports a hybrid connectivity model — combining internet, private networking, and SD-WAN overlay — in a fully managed operations environment for both Managed Network and Managed Security Services. This role is pivotal in ensuring scalability, reliability, performance, and security requirements are accomplished across thousands of distributed customer endpoint locations.
This role demands a blend of deep technical expertise, strategic foresight, and strong communication skills. The Sr. Lead Engineer specializing in Customer Network Architect is not only a designer but also a steward of operational excellence, ensuring that the network evolves in alignment with business needs and customer expectations.

The Main Responsibilities

Daily Operational Tasks
• Network Health Monitoring: Oversee real-time monitoring of SD-WAN fabric, transport links, and edge devices using tools like Cisco vManage, FortiManager, SolarWinds, ITSM, and NetFlow.
• Incident Response & Troubleshooting: Lead root cause analysis for complex network outages or performance degradation; coordinate with NOC and engineering teams.
• Configuration Management: Work with A&E and operations to validate and approve changes to configuration templates, policies, and routing configurations.
• Customer Engagement: Lead technical point of contact for technical interaction, escalations, providing insights and updates on network performance and incidents.

Long-Term Strategy & Planning
• Scalability Design: Architect solutions to support growth from 4,000 to 5,000+ sites, ensuring bandwidth, redundancy, and policy scalability.
• Technology Road mapping: Partner with Solution Architecture and sales to evaluate emerging technologies (e.g., SASE, AI-driven analytics, 5G integration) and propose adoption strategies.
• Network Architecture: Design and engineer network services, application, and architecture in addition to network diagrams, modeling and solutions to meet the customer's needs.
• Security Architecture: Integrate secure edge capabilities, zero-trust principles, and segmentation strategies into the SD-WAN design.
• Cloud Integration: Design optimized paths to cloud services (Azure, AWS, GCP) using direct internet access and cloud on-ramp features.
• Customer Assessment: Assessment of network strengths, weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Capacity and traffic pattern analysis on current and projected traffic loads. Measured assessment of network performance and availability

Engineering Alignment
Internal Collaboration
• Network Engineering: Work closely with engineering teams to validate designs, test new features, and troubleshooting complex issues.
• DevOps & Automation: Partner with automation teams to streamline provisioning, monitoring, and compliance using APIs and other IT integration systems.
• Security Teams: Align with cybersecurity teams to enforce policy compliance, threat detection, and secure tunneling.

Customer Collaboration
• Architecture Reviews: Conduct regular design and performance reviews with customer stakeholders.
• Change Advisory Board (CAB): Participate in CAB meetings to assess impact and risk of proposed changes.
• Training & Enablement: Provide technical guidance and documentation to customer IT teams for operational awareness

Awareness & Challenges
Network Issues (examples)
• Latency and jitter across diverse transport types (MPLS, MTIPS, broadband, LTE)
• Packet loss due to underlay instability or misconfigured QoS
• Policy conflicts in centralized vs. local breakout scenarios
Expansion & Growth Challenges
• Template and policy scalability across thousands of devices
• WAN transport diversity and availability in remote locations
• Maintaining consistent security posture across expanding footprint
Engineering Challenges
• Interoperability between legacy infrastructure and SD-WAN
• Real-time visibility and telemetry across hybrid environments
• Automation of provisioning and updates at scale

What We Look For in a Candidate

• Desired Certifications: CCNP, CCIE, Security +, JNCIP-SEC, NSE4/5
• 5 + year of technical customer call center experience.
• Associate degree in Engineering, Electronics, Networks or related technical or vocational education or equivalent experience or 7+ years of related work experience.
• Expert knowledge of TCP/IP, routing protocols, and IP addressing.
• Experience with basic commands in Cisco, Juniper, and Fortigate.
• Firewall experience
• Direct customer interaction communication skills
• Direct experience with designing, implementing and overall life-cycle management of large WAN/LAN Networks

General Work Competencies / Abilities:

• Strong technical skill level working on complex assignments within the network systems (implementation, acceptance, and change management).
• Ability to resolve complex network problems involving power, network hardware/software, lines, routers, firewalls, modems, and terminals.
• Ability to use software/hardware tools to identify and diagnose network status and problems.
• Experience conducting installation and maintenance on complex network monitoring equipment.
• Ability to resolve complex trouble tickets.
• Apply excellent customer service skills
• The desire to work in a complex 24x7 environment.
• Demonstrated proficiency with trouble ticketing application as well as other internal tools
• The ability to work off hours/on call and during holidays
• Expertise Mentoring/Training/Coaching team members

Compensation

This information reflects the anticipated base salary range for this position based on current national data. Minimums and maximums may vary based on location. Individual pay is based on skills, experience and other relevant factors.

Location Based Pay Ranges

$129,639 - $172,852 in these states: AL AR AZ FL GA IA ID IN KS KY LA ME MO MS MT ND NE NM OH OK PA SC SD TN UT VT WI WV WY
$136,121 - $181,494 in these states: CO HI MI MN NC NH NV OR RI
$142,603 - $190,137 in these states: AK CA CT DC DE IL MA MD NJ NY TX VA WA

Lumen offers a comprehensive package featuring a broad range of Health, Life, Voluntary Lifestyle benefits and other perks that enhance your physical, mental, emotional and financial wellbeing. We're able to answer any additional questions you may have about our bonus structure (short-term incentives, long-term incentives and/or sales compensation) as you move through the selection process.

Learn more about Lumen's:

Benefits
Bonus Structure

#LI-Remote

Requisition #: 341531

Background Screening

If you are selected for a position, there will be a background screen, which may include checks for criminal records and/or motor vehicle reports and/or drug screening, depending on the position requirements. For more information on these checks, please refer to the Post Offer section of our FAQ page. Job-related concerns identified during the background screening may disqualify you from the new position or your current role. Background results will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Equal Employment Opportunities

We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all persons regardless of race, color, ancestry, citizenship, national origin, religion, veteran status, disability, genetic characteristic or information, age, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, family status, pregnancy, or other legally protected status (collectively, “protected statuses”). We do not tolerate unlawful discrimination in any employment decisions, including recruiting, hiring, compensation, promotion, benefits, discipline, termination, job assignments or training.

Privacy Notice

Lumen is committed to protecting the privacy and security of personal information collected during the recruitment and hiring process. Our Privacy Notice explains how we collect, use, disclose, and protect applicant information, as well as how individuals may request access to or deletion of their personal data.

To review Lumen’s Privacy Notice, please visit:
https://jobs.lumen.com/global/en/privacy-notice

Disclaimer

The job responsibilities described above indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees within this classification. It is not intended to include a comprehensive inventory of all duties and responsibilities for this job. Job duties and responsibilities are subject to change based on evolving business needs and conditions.

In any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information such as age, date of birth, or dates of school attendance or graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this information.

Please be advised that Lumen does not require any form of payment from job applicants during the recruitment process. All legitimate job openings will be posted on our official website or communicated through official company email addresses. If you encounter any job offers that request payment in exchange for employment at Lumen, they are not for employment with us, but may relate to another company with a similar name.

From metro connectivity to long-haul data transport to our edge cloud, security, managed service, and digital platform capabilities, we meet our customers’ networking needs today and as they build for tomorrow. Our experience-first approach to networking, edge cloud and cybersecurity connects people, data and apps―quickly, securely and effortlessly. We ignite business growth and accelerate innovation for 8 of the 10 most valuable brands in the world.