Lead Network Operations Engineer

Lead comprehensive shift turnover, ensuring accurate and actionable communication regarding open incidents, ongoing work, scheduled maintenance, and pending escalations. The regular schedule consists of five shifts per week, with workdays potentially falling on any day of the week and assignments occurring across day, evening, and overnight shifts.

About Eleven Recruiting 
We are a specialized technology staffing agency supporting professional and financial services companies. Why do we stand out in technology staffing? We listen and act as advisors for our candidates on how they can best add value, find interesting projects, and pave a path for career advancement. We advocate for the best pay, diversity in tech, and the best job fit for every candidate we place.

Our client, a non-profit technology and networking organization, is seeking a Lead Network Operations Engineer to join their team in La Mirada, CA!
  Responsibilities:

• Provide technical leadership and direction to Network Operations Engineers and Administrators assigned to the shift.
• Delegate tasks, manage workload, and maintain accountability for shift performance and operational priorities.
• Serve as the primary technical escalation point for complex incidents, outages, and service-affecting events.
• Lead shift response during major network incidents and coordinate resources through resolution.
• Conduct regular reviews of ticket quality, incident documentation, and operational procedures.
• Ensure team members follow current NOC processes, procedures, and operational standards.
• Lead comprehensive shift turnover, ensuring accurate and actionable communication regarding open incidents, ongoing work, scheduled maintenance, and pending escalations.
• Provide mentoring, coaching, technical guidance, and professional development support to shift personnel.
• Track and report shift-level metrics, KPIs, operational trends, and areas for improvement.
• Collaborate with Network Engineering, Security, Program Management, vendors, and other technical teams to improve network reliability and operational efficiency.

Technical Responsibilities:

• Serve as the senior technical authority on shift for complex network issues, major incidents, and service-affecting events.
• Apply advanced knowledge of DWDM, BGP, OSPF, IS-IS, MPLS, Segment Routing, LDP, L2VPN, IPVPN, and EVPN to diagnose and resolve network incidents.
• Troubleshoot large-scale IP and optical network infrastructure, including DWDM optical line systems, data center interconnects, and transport-layer technologies.
• Diagnose physical-layer faults, capacity issues, traffic anomalies, routing problems, and other network performance events.
• Lead incident response from initial detection through resolution, including technical coordination, stakeholder communications, escalation, and post-incident review.
• Proactively monitor network health and identify emerging performance, capacity, or reliability concerns before they become service-affecting.
• Maintain accountability for open tickets and work items, ensuring timely updates, appropriate escalation, and complete resolution or handoff.
• Lead the planning and execution of network maintenance windows, upgrades, and equipment installations.
• Support network equipment installation, upgrades, configuration, and security hardening.
• Coordinate with vendors and carriers to resolve chronic circuit issues, obtain detailed root-cause or RFO documentation, and evaluate vendor performance.
• Identify opportunities to automate or eliminate repetitive manual operational tasks.
• Contribute to the development and improvement of NOC processes, procedures, tools, and workflows.
• Stay current with emerging networking technologies and apply relevant developments to improve network operations.
• Participate in occasional travel to network facilities or remote sites for maintenance, upgrades, and equipment installations.

Required Qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience in network operations and engineering at a CCNP, JNCIP, or equivalent level.
• Strong experience operating large-scale IP networks in a 24/7 production environment.
• Deep working knowledge of:
  • BGP
  • OSPF and/or IS-IS
  • MPLS
  • Segment Routing and/or LDP
  • L2VPN and IPVPN
  • EVPN or similar technologies
  • Traffic engineering
• Hands-on experience with DWDM optical networking and data center interconnect (DCI) environments.
• Strong troubleshooting skills across IP, optical, transport, and physical network layers.
• Experience with network hardware installation, upgrades, configuration, and hardening.
• Strong vendor-agnostic understanding of modern networking platforms.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical teams, mentor engineers, and coordinate incident response.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong operational judgment and the ability to make sound decisions during high-pressure incidents.
• Four-year degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field preferred; equivalent professional experience will be considered.

Preferred Qualifications:

• CCIE, JNCIE, or equivalent expert-level networking certification.
• 10+ years of network operations and engineering experience.
• Prior leadership experience within a NOC, network operations, service provider, telecommunications, or large-scale enterprise environment.
• Experience supporting research and education networks or other mission-critical, high-availability network environments.
• Experience with large-scale optical, backbone, or service-provider networks.
• Experience with network automation and operational workflow improvement.

What Makes This Opportunity Unique:

• Senior technical leadership without a traditional management role.
• Work directly with sophisticated IP, optical, and backbone network infrastructure.
• Lead response to complex network incidents and major outages.
• Mentor and develop other network engineers.
• Influence NOC processes, standards, automation, and operational improvements.
• Gain exposure to advanced technologies including DWDM, MPLS, Segment Routing, EVPN, BGP, and DCI.
• Opportunity to work in a mission-critical environment where network reliability and performance have a significant real-world impact.

Schedule & Work Environment:

• This is a 24/7/365 Network Operations Center environment. The regular schedule consists of five shifts per week, with workdays potentially falling on any day of the week and assignments occurring across day, evening, and overnight shifts.
• Candidates must be flexible and willing to work:
  • Any day of the week
  • Day shifts
  • Evening shifts
  • Overnight shifts
  • Weekends
  • Holidays as required
• Hybrid schedule: Employees work onsite during the first two weeks of each month and remotely during the final two weeks.

Salary: $130,000 - $145,000

Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, remember that Eleven recruiters only contact you from @elevenrecruiting.com email addresses. Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate Eleven recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. If you're ever unsure about a communication, don't click any links—visit https://jobs.elevenrecruiting.com/directly for confirmed position openings.