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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Network Operations Coordinator

💰 $55,000 - $85,000

Network OperationsITTelecommunicationsOperations

🎯 Role Definition

The Network Operations Coordinator is responsible for monitoring, maintaining, and coordinating day-to-day network operations to ensure high availability, performance, and security across LAN, WAN, cloud, and hybrid environments. This role sits at the intersection of operations, incident management, and customer-facing support: it owns ticket lifecycle coordination, coordinates escalation paths, runs routine network health checks and maintenance windows, and partners with engineering teams to drive root cause analysis and continuous improvement. The ideal candidate combines hands-on technical proficiency with strong communication, process-oriented thinking, and experience using network monitoring and ITSM/ticketing platforms.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Network Technician / Network Support Specialist
  • IT Help Desk Level II / Systems Support
  • Telecommunications Technician

Advancement To:

  • Senior Network Operations Coordinator / NOC Team Lead
  • Network Operations Center (NOC) Manager
  • Network Engineer / Senior Network Engineer

Lateral Moves:

  • Systems Reliability Engineer (SRE)
  • IT Service Delivery Manager
  • Incident Response / Security Operations (SecOps) Analyst

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Monitor network performance and availability using enterprise-grade NOC tools (SolarWinds, Nagios, Zabbix, Datadog, or Splunk), proactively identify anomalies and trigger incident workflows to minimize downtime and SLA breaches.
  • Triage incoming network incidents and service requests from multiple channels (ticketing, e-mail, phone, monitoring alerts), perform first-level diagnostics, and assign or escalate tickets according to severity and runbook procedures.
  • Maintain ownership of ticket lifecycle: document troubleshooting steps, coordinate updates with stakeholders, verify service restoration, and ensure timely closure with post-incident classification and tagging.
  • Coordinate scheduled maintenance and change windows, communicate planned outages to impacted stakeholders, and execute or supervise network change steps in accordance with change management and CAB approvals.
  • Execute standardized troubleshooting for routing and switching issues across Cisco, Juniper, Arista, or similar platforms, including interface status, route table inspection, ARP/NDP checks and basic configuration validation.
  • Perform routine health checks for core network components (firewalls, routers, switches, load balancers, WAN optimizers), validate backups of critical configurations, and ensure device firmware/patch status is tracked.
  • Manage and correlate multi-source telemetry (SNMP traps, syslog, NetFlow/sFlow, telemetry streams) to create an accurate incident context for engineers and reduce mean time to acknowledge (MTTA) and mean time to resolve (MTTR).
  • Run and maintain on-call rotations, provide escalation point coverage, and ensure timely handover and knowledge transfer during shift changes to maintain 24/7 operational readiness.
  • Assist with VPN, MPLS and BGP troubleshooting for remote sites and partner connections; validate routing policies, prefix announcements, and perform path-trace analysis for routing anomalies.
  • Implement and refine alerting thresholds and suppression rules to reduce false positives while preserving visibility for critical network conditions and emergent incidents.
  • Support capacity planning and performance trending by compiling utilization reports, forecasting growth, and recommending hardware or configuration adjustments to prevent bottlenecks.
  • Maintain and update operational runbooks, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and incident response playbooks to capture best practices and lessons learned from major incidents.
  • Coordinate cross-functional incident response involving cloud teams, security, application owners and vendors; schedule and lead incident bridge calls and provide concise status communications to stakeholders.
  • Conduct configuration audits and baseline comparisons to detect drift; coordinate remediation with engineering teams to align configurations with security and availability standards.
  • Validate upstream provider and carrier issues, engage with service providers for escalations, and manage outage notifications and RCA follow-up as necessary.
  • Support IP address management (IPAM), DNS troubleshooting, and service provisioning tasks for new sites or equipment, ensuring accurate documentation in CMDB or relevant asset systems.
  • Assist network engineers with lab testing and staging efforts, including firmware upgrades, configuration changes, and automated configuration deployment using scripts or automation tooling.
  • Participate in security hardening activities for network devices (ACLs, segmentation, logging), collaborate with security teams on vulnerability patching, and support SIEM integrations for network telemetry.
  • Produce operational reports and dashboards for leadership: SLA compliance, incident trends, uptime, root cause analysis summaries, and continuous improvement recommendations.
  • Provide technical support and training to junior NOC staff and cross-functional teams on common network issues, troubleshooting techniques, and ticketing best practices.
  • Manage vendor relationships for network hardware and managed services, coordinate support cases, and validate vendor-provided fixes and software patches.
  • Participate in post-incident reviews and problem management to identify systemic issues, propose remediation plans, and track the implementation of corrective actions.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Assist in developing automated monitoring playbooks and scripts (Python, Bash, Ansible) to improve visibility and reduce manual tasks.
  • Help maintain the configuration management database (CMDB) and ensure network asset documentation is accurate and up to date.
  • Provide input into procurement and capacity planning for network refreshes and technology upgrades.
  • Support audit and compliance activities by supplying evidence of operational controls, change approvals, and incident records.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Network monitoring and alerting: SolarWinds, Nagios, Zabbix, Datadog, or Splunk and ability to tune alerting rules and dashboards for effective NOC operations.
  • Ticketing and ITSM systems: ServiceNow, Jira Service Desk, Zendesk or similar; strong ticket lifecycle management and SLA awareness.
  • Routing & switching fundamentals: strong working knowledge of TCP/IP, OSPF, EIGRP, BGP, VLANs, STP, and trunking across multi-vendor environments.
  • Hands-on experience with firewall and security appliances (Palo Alto, Fortinet, Cisco ASA/Firepower) for basic troubleshooting and rule verification.
  • WAN technologies and protocols: MPLS, VPN (IPsec, SSL), carrier circuit testing, and basic QoS troubleshooting.
  • SNMP, syslog, NetFlow/sFlow, and telemetry ingestion for correlation and analysis of network events.
  • Basic scripting and automation: familiarity with Python, Bash, or automation frameworks (Ansible, Terraform) to automate routine NOC tasks.
  • Network diagnostic tools: tcpdump, Wireshark, traceroute, ping, mtr, and the ability to interpret packet captures and flow data.
  • IP address management (IPAM) and DNS troubleshooting skills; experience maintaining IP allocations and reverse DNS where relevant.
  • Change and configuration management: familiarity with version control for device configs and practices to safely apply changes in production.
  • Logging and observability integrations: basic experience with SIEMs (Splunk, QRadar) and ingesting network logs for security and analytics.
  • Cloud networking basics: understanding of AWS/GCP/Azure networking constructs (VPC, route tables, peering, Load Balancers) and hybrid connectivity.
  • Knowledge of ITIL processes (incident, problem, change management) and SLAs to support predictable operations and reporting.

Soft Skills

  • Strong written and verbal communication: clear incident summaries, stakeholder updates and post-incident reports.
  • Organized and process-driven: disciplined about runbooks, documentation, and following escalation matrices.
  • Analytical thinker and problem solver: able to synthesize telemetry and logs to rapidly identify root causes.
  • Customer-service orientation: calm, empathetic support for internal and external stakeholders during outages.
  • Team player and collaborator: works effectively with engineering, security, vendors and product owners to resolve incidents.
  • Time management and prioritization: handles multiple concurrent incidents while maintaining quality and SLA compliance.
  • Adaptability and learning agility: comfortable with evolving toolsets and architectures, continuous improvement mindset.
  • Attention to detail: precise ticket documentation, configuration verification and follow-through on action items.
  • Leadership potential: able to lead incident bridges and mentor junior staff during escalations.
  • Stress tolerance and resilience: performs reliably in high-pressure production incidents and on-call scenarios.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Associate degree in Information Technology, Computer Networking, Telecommunications, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Network Engineering, Telecommunications, or related field.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Network Engineering
  • Information Technology
  • Computer Science
  • Telecommunications

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 2–5 years of progressive experience in network operations, NOC, or network support roles; or 1–3 years with strong technical certifications and demonstrated hands-on experience.

Preferred:

  • 3+ years in a NOC or operations center environment, experience with enterprise monitoring platforms, and a track record of incident coordination and escalation.
  • Certifications such as CCNA, CompTIA Network+, ITIL Foundation, or vendor-specific certifications are a plus.
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