Position Summary :
The Circuit Delivery Project Manager / Team Lead is a senior delivery leader responsible for managing complex telecommunications deployments and serving as the primary escalation point for the Circuit Delivery organization. This role oversees the successful delivery of Broadband, Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), LEO satellite, Fixed Wireless, and 5G wireless services across domestic and international locations.
The Project Manager / Team Lead manages circuit delivery projects from order initiation through installation, testing, turn-up, and closeout while coordinating directly with customers, carriers, engineering teams, internal stakeholders, and delivery coordinators. The role combines hands-on project management with team leadership, carrier escalation, risk management, process governance, and coaching.
The successful candidate must bring meaningful telecommunications and carrier-services experience. This position is intended for an experienced professional who understands carrier ordering and provisioning processes, can navigate carrier organizations and portals, understands common delivery risks, and can quickly determine the appropriate escalation path when an order is delayed or at risk. Experience working for or with major carriers such as AT&T, Verizon, Lumen, Comcast Business, Spectrum Enterprise, Cox Business, Zayo, or comparable providers is highly desirable.
Core Responsibilities :
- Lead complex circuit and wireless service deployments from order through final turn-up and closeout.
- Serve as the primary escalation point for carrier delivery issues, missed milestones, construction delays, provisioning problems, access challenges, and customer-impacting risks.
- Direct and prioritize the work of Circuit Delivery Coordinators supporting assigned projects and ensure appropriate workload distribution.
- Establish and maintain project schedules, milestone plans, dependencies, risks, action items, and customer commitments.
- Manage multiple domestic and international carrier relationships and drive providers toward committed delivery dates.
- Review carrier order status, portal information, provisioning milestones, and exceptions to determine project health and required action.
- Validate that carrier solutions and order details align with customer requirements, including service type, bandwidth, location, demarcation, delivery method, and requested dates.
- Lead customer and internal status meetings for complex or high-visibility deployments and communicate clear recovery plans when milestones are at risk.
- Partner with engineering and technical teams on service design, demarcation, equipment requirements, testing, activation, and turn-up.
- Ensure required delivery documentation is complete, accurate, and retained in accordance with company standards.
- Identify systemic carrier performance issues and recurring delivery bottlenecks; develop corrective actions and escalate trends to leadership.
- Establish escalation paths and maintain productive relationships with carrier account teams, provisioning groups, construction teams, dispatch, and support organizations.
- Coach and mentor Delivery Coordinators on milestone management, carrier communication, documentation, escalation practices, and delivery standards.
- Review aging orders and project health metrics and proactively intervene before customer commitments are missed.
- Drive continuous improvement of carrier delivery processes, templates, reporting, and operating procedures.
- Ensure projects are delivered in accordance with customer SLAs, internal standards, contractual commitments, and applicable operational procedures.
Carrier & Telecom Expertise :
- Demonstrated working knowledge of carrier ordering, provisioning, construction, dispatch, installation, testing, and service activation processes.
- Experience managing services such as Broadband, DIA, Ethernet, Point-to-Point, Fixed Wireless, 5G/LTE, and/or LEO satellite services.
- Ability to work effectively with multiple carriers simultaneously and understand differences in carrier processes, portals, terminology, and escalation paths.
- Experience navigating carrier organizations and escalating issues through account teams, provisioning, construction, engineering, dispatch, and leadership channels.
- Ability to interpret carrier order information and recognize inconsistencies or risks that may not be obvious to a less experienced coordinator.
- Experience with domestic and international service delivery is strongly preferred.
Leadership & Project Management Expectations :
- Own project outcomes rather than simply tracking tasks; actively drive stakeholders toward resolution.
- Establish clear accountability for each milestone, action item, dependency, and escalation.
- Provide direction to Coordinators while remaining accountable for overall project health and customer commitments.
- Maintain executive-ready status reporting for high-priority, complex, or at-risk deployments.
- Develop recovery plans when delivery dates are missed or carrier performance creates project risk.
- Use project management best practices to manage scope, schedule, risk, communications, dependencies, and stakeholder expectations.
- Standardize delivery practices and help build repeatable processes that can scale with increasing circuit volume.
Qualifications :
- Bachelor's degree in Business, Information Technology, Telecommunications, Project Management, or related field preferred; equivalent experience will be considered.
- 5+ years of project management, telecommunications, carrier services, network delivery, or related experience.
- Significant hands-on experience with telecom/carrier service delivery is required.
- PMP certification preferred.
- Experience working for, with, or closely alongside major telecom/carrier organizations such as AT&T, Verizon, Lumen, Comcast Business, Spectrum Enterprise, Cox Business, Zayo, or comparable providers strongly preferred.
- Proven experience managing multiple concurrent telecom deployments and customer commitments.
- Strong understanding of carrier portals, ordering systems, provisioning workflows, and delivery milestones.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate effectively with executives, customers, carriers, engineers, and delivery teams.
- Strong analytical, organizational, problem-solving, and escalation-management skills.
- Intermediate or greater proficiency with Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office, and project management tools.
Preferred Experience :
- Experience leading a carrier services delivery or circuit provisioning team.
- Experience with enterprise multi-site deployments, national rollouts, or international telecommunications programs.
- Experience with SD-WAN, Internet, DIA, Ethernet, Broadband, wireless, fixed wireless, or LEO deployments.
- Experience establishing carrier scorecards, KPIs, delivery metrics, or escalation processes.
- Experience building or improving telecom delivery processes and operational standards.
- PMP certification or comparable formal project management training.
Success Factors :
- Recognized as the person who can get a difficult carrier order moving when normal processes fail.
- Strong carrier relationships and the credibility to escalate issues effectively.
- Balances urgency and customer service with disciplined project management.
- Highly organized, data-driven, and comfortable managing a large volume of concurrent work.
- Leads through accountability, coaching, and clear communication.
- Quickly identifies the root cause of delivery problems and develops practical recovery plans.
- Creates structure and consistency across the Circuit Delivery team while maintaining flexibility for customer-specific requirements.
Role Differentiation
The Project Manager / Team Lead is expected to bring the telecom and carrier knowledge required to lead complex deployments and resolve escalations. Unlike the Coordinator role, prior carrier-services experience is a core requirement for this position. The Coordinator can be developed through structured training and hands-on experience; the Team Lead must be able to step into an active carrier escalation, understand the underlying issue, identify the correct carrier path, and provide direction to the team.
