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Network Operations Supervisor — Key Responsibilities and Required Skills

💰 $80,000 - $120,000

Network OperationsIT OperationsNOCTelecommunicationsNetwork Engineering

🎯 Role Definition

The Network Operations Supervisor is a hands-on operational leader responsible for supervising day-to-day network operations, ensuring uptime and service reliability across enterprise LAN/WAN, cloud and carrier networks, leading incident response and root cause analysis, managing NOC shifts and staff performance, and driving continuous process improvement to meet SLAs and business objectives. This role combines team leadership, technical acumen in routing/switching and network monitoring, vendor coordination, and operational governance to deliver resilient, secure, and scalable network services.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Network Engineer with hands-on routing/switching and NOC exposure
  • NOC Lead / Senior NOC Technician who has run shifts and handled escalations
  • Systems Administrator or Telecom Operations Engineer with network focus

Advancement To:

  • Network Operations Manager
  • Head of NOC / Director of Network Operations
  • Senior Technical Program Manager — Network Services

Lateral Moves:

  • Incident Response Manager / IT Service Continuity Manager
  • Security Operations Supervisor / Network Security Lead
  • Cloud Network Architect / SD-WAN Specialist

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Lead, coach and supervise a multi-shift NOC team of network analysts and technicians, ensuring clear shift handovers, adherence to schedules, and consistent application of operational procedures to maintain 24x7 network availability.
  • Own incident lifecycle management for major network outages: triage, coordinate on-call engineers, escalate to engineering and vendors, communicate status to stakeholders, and drive timely resolution to meet SLA and business impact requirements.
  • Define, monitor and enforce network performance and availability KPIs (MTTR, MTTD, uptime %, incident reopened rate), deliver weekly/monthly operational reports, and present trends and capacity forecasts to senior leadership.
  • Implement and maintain robust escalation matrices and runbooks for common failure modes, ensuring accurate, version-controlled documentation that enables repeatable, effective incident response across shifts.
  • Manage vendor relationships for carriers, managed services providers, and hardware vendors; coordinate escalation, RMA, maintenance windows, and contract SLAs to ensure timely vendor accountability and service restoration.
  • Oversee network change control and maintenance windows: review change requests, assess operational risk, coordinate cross-functional stakeholders, schedule maintenance to minimize business impact, and validate post-change testing and rollback plans.
  • Plan and lead post-incident reviews (RCA) with engineering and vendors, capture root causes, assign remediation actions, track mitigation timelines, and verify closure to prevent recurrence.
  • Drive capacity planning and performance tuning initiatives by analyzing traffic trends, forecasting utilization, and recommending upgrades to routers, switches, WAN links, and cloud network components to meet growth and redundancy needs.
  • Coordinate network security hardening activities with Security Operations (patching schedules, firmware upgrades, ACL reviews, vulnerability remediation) and ensure operational processes support security baseline compliance.
  • Administer and optimize network monitoring, alerting and observability platforms (NMS, SNMP, flow telemetry, synthetic tests), tune alert thresholds to reduce noise, and ensure actionable alerts reach the right on-call resource promptly.
  • Supervise configuration management and version control for network devices, enforce standardized templates/configurations, and validate backups to accelerate recovery and ensure configuration integrity.
  • Manage provisioning and decommissioning workflows for network services (VLANs, VPNs, MPLS, SD-WAN, cloud VPC connectivity), ensuring proper labeling, documentation, and fulfillment times consistent with service catalogs.
  • Lead onboarding, training and continuous learning for NOC staff: create competency matrices, conduct shift shadowing, certify technicians on core tools and procedures, and maintain a high-performing team culture.
  • Drive automation and runbook-driven operations by identifying repeatable tasks for scripting (Python, Ansible), integrating playbooks into the incident response process, and reducing manual toil and mean time to repair.
  • Ensure DR and business continuity readiness for network services by coordinating failover tests, validating backup paths and controllers, and maintaining accurate DR runbooks and contact lists.
  • Oversee procurement input and lifecycle management activities for network hardware and spare parts, maintain spares inventory, and coordinate logistics to reduce lead times for critical replacements.
  • Coordinate cross-functional projects with capacity, security, cloud, application and datacenter teams to deliver network changes with minimal service disruption and aligned test/validation plans.
  • Establish and maintain service-level documentation, SOPs, and compliance records; support internal and external audits and regulatory requirements related to network operations and availability.
  • Implement cost control and optimization measures across network operations (bandwidth utilization, vendor SLA negotiation, managed service consumption), making recommendations to reduce operational expenses without sacrificing reliability.
  • Maintain on-call schedules, manage rotation fairness, approve overtime and escalate personnel or coverage gaps to leadership while ensuring high morale and retention.
  • Measure and report team performance and quality of service via dashboards, drive continuous improvement initiatives (Kaizen/Lean) and lead cross-shift retrospectives to improve processes and knowledge sharing.
  • Assist in network architecture reviews and provide operational input for new designs, feasibility studies, and pilot deployments to ensure designs are supportable and maintainable by the operations team.

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.
  • Support audit requests and assist with evidence collection for SLA and compliance reporting.
  • Mentor junior engineers and contribute to career development plans and performance reviews.
  • Coordinate communications and incident status updates to internal stakeholders and external customers during major events.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Deep knowledge of routing and switching protocols (BGP, OSPF, EIGRP) and hands-on experience configuring and troubleshooting enterprise routers and switches (Cisco, Juniper, Arista).
  • Strong LAN/WAN technologies experience including MPLS, Ethernet, VLAN, VXLAN, Spanning Tree, and WAN optimization / SD-WAN platforms (Cisco vEdge, Viptela, Fortinet SD-WAN, VMware SD-WAN).
  • Proficiency with network monitoring and observability tools (SolarWinds, Nagios, Zabbix, Datadog, ThousandEyes, NetFlow/sFlow/IPFIX) and ability to design effective alerting and dashboards.
  • Experience with network security controls and appliances (firewalls, IDS/IPS, VPNs, ACLs) and integration with Security Operations for patching and incident response.
  • Familiarity with cloud networking (AWS VPC, Azure Virtual Network, GCP networking), hybrid connectivity (Direct Connect, ExpressRoute, VPN) and cloud routing patterns.
  • Scripting and automation skills (Python, Bash, Ansible, Salt, Terraform) to automate repetitive operational tasks, orchestration, and configuration management.
  • Practical experience with configuration management and version control for network devices (Git, network configuration archives) and backup/restore procedures.
  • Strong incident management and ITSM tool experience (ServiceNow, JIRA, Remedy) including ticket lifecycle, SLAs, and automated escalation workflows.
  • Knowledge of QoS, traffic engineering, traffic shaping, and capacity planning to prioritize business-critical applications and voice/video services.
  • Experience with VoIP/SIP and collaboration network elements (if relevant) including QoS for voice/video and troubleshooting RTP/SIP flows.
  • Competency with observability data sources (SNMP, syslog, packet captures, flow analysis) and the ability to lead forensic analysis during outages.
  • Understanding of disaster recovery, high-availability designs, and failover testing for network services.
  • Familiarity with compliance frameworks and audit requirements relevant to network operations (ISO, SOC 2, PCI-DSS) and evidence collection practices.

Soft Skills

  • Leadership and people management: proven ability to lead multi-shift teams, mentor staff, set objectives, and manage performance.
  • Effective written and verbal communicator: translate technical incidents into concise executive updates and compose clear runbooks and SOPs.
  • Strong problem solving and analytical mindset: prioritize actions under pressure, perform root cause analysis, and recommend durable fixes.
  • Stakeholder management and customer focus: manage expectations, communicate timely updates, and maintain trust during incidents and changes.
  • Time management and organization: multitask across incident response, projects, and administrative responsibilities while maintaining attention to detail.
  • Decision-making under pressure: make rapid, high-risk/impact decisions during outages and handle escalation boundaries clearly.
  • Coaching and training aptitude: develop onboarding programs, continuous learning, and knowledge transfer across teams.
  • Change management and process orientation: enforce change control discipline and drive process improvements with measurable outcomes.
  • Collaboration and cross-functional influence: work seamlessly with engineering, security, cloud, and vendor teams to deliver outcomes.
  • Continuous improvement mindset: identify waste, automate repeatable tasks, and foster a culture of operational excellence.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Network Engineering, Telecommunications, or related technical field (or equivalent experience).

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in a technical discipline with supplemental leadership coursework or certifications in IT service management.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Information Technology / Network Engineering
  • Telecommunications
  • Electrical Engineering

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 5–10 years of progressive network operations experience including at least 2–4 years in a lead or supervisory capacity in a NOC or operations team.

Preferred: 7+ years of enterprise networking experience with demonstrated supervisory experience, proven incident management track record, and certifications such as CCNP/CCIE, JNCIP, PCNSE, or relevant cloud networking certifications (AWS, Azure).

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