WAN Technology Architect USA Remote

The WAN Technology Architect is Lumen's premier expert in designing IPVPN/MPLS, DIA/HSIP/Internet, E-Services and Access Solutions. This role will work in partnership with our sales, product and operational teams to provide comprehensive Wide Area Networking solutions to Lumen's customers. In this role your expertise in Lumen's network, products, and the technologies they are built upon will help shape the solutions our customers require and demand. As a WAN Technology Architect, you will partner with Sales Professionals and Solution Architects and meet directly with our customers as part of the Lumen team. As a Technology Architect you are equally comfortable speaking with an IT Manager or a CIO. You will work with clients from all market segments including our largest clients with sophisticated and complex operating environments. In partnership with the Sales Team, you'll help facilitate business development conversations with CIOs or other C-level executives to ascertain these leader's Network strategy, challenges, and key initiatives. To be successful, you'll have a strong desire to leverage your technical skills and business acumen, to understand business requirements, develop a technical sales strategy, and effectively present solutions that address our clients' requirements and provide business value.
The professional in the position can reside anywhere in the continental USA.

The professional in the position can reside anywhere in the continental USA.

• Design resilient and diverse access solutions for Lumen's Layer 2/3 Products. Large and Complex deal support for Lumen's Layer 2 and 3 Products.
• Customer Meetings: Participate in and lead strategic multi-domain (State of Cloud, State of Edge, State of Security, etc., but most importantly State of Network) customer meetings in person and via collaboration tools. Build purposeful agendas designed to stimulate network strategy dialogue. Through these sessions ascertain challenges and key network initiatives to provide clients actionable next steps and recommendations.
• Communications: Capable of delivering technical proposals and presentations with a high level of business acumen and thrives with strategic conversations. Comfortable and regularly interacts with customer C-level, enterprise architects and individuals with expert level industry certifications (Cisco-CCIE, AWS-Professional, Microsoft-Expert). Provides broad scope responses to solution and technology questions. Demonstrates advanced solution selling abilities and effective, pro-active customer communications.
• Specialized Solution Design: Go-to expert for Technology Architects and Solution Architects utilizing expertise, knowledge, and experience for highly complex customer solutions. Provide an on-demand design, solution best practices in industry expertise to the sales teams during the customer lifecycle journey. Design solution strategies that meet the customers' business objectives by mapping to Lumen and 3rd party products and ensure all elements of the design are integrated and interoperable. Clarifies ambiguous requirements with sales and clients, ensuring the solution resolves underlying client issues. Provides guidance and alternatives to customer's requirements.
• Internal and External Training: Follow industry technology trends through self-study and formal training and shares this knowledge with the teams they support along with their peer groups. Develop and present training within WAN TAG's scope. Advises customers, sales, and customer success on technical aspects of proposed solutions including fit to customer's needs, features, availability, etc. Works to enable Technology Solutions peers by freely sharing specialized knowledge.
• Thought Leadership: Provide influential unique insights and guidance to customers based on experience and knowledge. Be a visionary and thought leader, sharing innovative and forward-thinking ideas that create positive disruption. Capable of writing white papers, blogs, and briefs and very comfortable speaking at industry events and participating in panel discussions.
• Product Partnership: Internal feedback loop to management, product, marketing, architecture & engineering and operations regarding the customer experience, product features/functionality, process improvement, and service implementation/management. Drives transformational change within the company, constantly looking for areas to improve product or process and design improvement.
• Custom Solutions: Exceptional understanding of technical and product boundaries within areas of specialization and understanding of multi-product solutions and how these products interact with each other as to what is standard, what is available via special approval process, and what is not able to be provided.
• RFP and RFI Responses: Provide expert support and tailor answers to our customer's requirements.
• Travel: Up to 25% for internal and customer in-person meetings and training.
  

• 5 years of networking experience with pre-sales, operations, engineering, and IT services industry.
• Comprehensive knowledge of Lumen's Core and Growth Product sets including DIA/HSIP, IPVPN, E-Services, Edge Compute, SASE, and SD-WAN.
• In depth knowledge of Lumen's Layer 1 and 2 networks.
• Ability to guide discussions with internal stakeholders to construct Total Cost of Ownership & evaluate Return on Investments for large enterprise customers when identifying & crafting customer solutions. Independently drive solutions & outcomes with ecosystem including sales, customer success, product, engineering, and operations.
• Expert problem-solving skills and ability to methodically understand and resolve complex issues across multiple products to integrate into a seamless customer solution. Must demonstrate the ability to focus ambiguous customer needs into specific, deliverable requirements. Must demonstrate creative solution development.
• Ability to work independently, part of a team or pull together and lead a team to build complex customer solutions. Must be able to build strong team relationships and easily transfer technical information. Ability to work under pressure with tight deadlines and on multiple projects simultaneously. Must be very detail oriented and demonstrate a high degree of accuracy and organization. Ability to prioritize with good time management skills.
• Must possess expert level communication skills capable of creating engaging proposals and presenting to customers.
• Advanced knowledge and usage of computer business applications such as Outlook, Word, Excel, Visio, and PowerPoint required.
• Strong listening, reasoning, and objection handling skills.
• CCNP Level Knowledge of Networking and BGP
• Understanding of Outside Plant Fiber practices, and fiber network construction
• MPLS/VPLS, Ethernet, EPL, Metro Ethernet Forum 2.0/3.0, CWDM/DWDM In depth knowledge set.
• Experience in Network Functions Virtualization
• Experience in Security solutions, SASE, SD-WA
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience (including military experience)

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