Director, Network Planning

Conterra Ultra Broadband; Whispering Oaks (NC); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401K program

Vacation & wellness days

9 paid holidays

Job summary

Conterra Ultra Broadband in Charlotte, NC seeks a Director of Network Planning to lead long-range network growth strategies, investment roadmaps, and cross-functional governance across Commercial Operations, Finance, Sales, GIS, IT, and Delivery.

This role emphasizes strategic planning over detailed fiber design, requiring hands-on leadership, data-driven decision making, and strong stakeholder collaboration to drive market opportunities and operational excellence.

Qualifications

• Experience in telecom, broadband, or strategic planning at senior level.
• Ability to build scalable planning processes and operating models.
• Strong executive communication and change leadership skills.

Responsibilities

• Develop market expansion strategies and long-range network growth plans.
• Own governance and continuous improvement of network enablement playbooks.
• Define stage gates, decision rights, and ownership across teams.
• Lead scenario planning for build-versus-buy and market entry.
• Ensure data quality and governance for planning reports and dashboards.

Skills

Strategic planning

Cross-functional leadership

Executive communication

Change leadership

Tools

IQGeo

Salesforce

ESRI

SQL

SharePoint

Job description

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Director, Network Planning

Full-time Regular Charlotte, NC, US

4 days ago Requisition ID: 1636

Position Summary

The Director of Network Planning leads Conterra's future-state network investment strategy, market expansion planning, cluster economics, and proactive growth enablement. This leader serves as the connective tissue across Commercial Operations, Finance, Sales, OSP Engineering, GIS, IT, Delivery, and Operations.

The role determines where Conterra should invest, why the investment is warranted, how opportunities should be prioritized, and what downstream teams need to execute. It is a strategic planning and orchestration role rather than a detailed fiber-design position.

This Director will report directly to the Chief Network Officer and incorporate itself within the existing Director hierarchy. The expectation is to develop strong partnerships, workflow processes, and establish checks and balances with the goal of iterating continual improvements and execution. Through every primary accountability below, this partnership is not called out but assumed and expected as stated.

Primary Accountabilities

Strategic Network Growth Planning

• Develop market expansion strategies and long-range network growth plans.
• Build and maintain market prioritization, readiness, and densification frameworks.
• Translate commercial objectives into network investment roadmaps for markets, clusters, buildings, towers, campuses, and data centers.

Playbook Leadership

• Own development, governance, and continuous improvement of network enablement playbooks.
• Define repeatable workflows for MTU enablement, cluster development, mid-market campaigns, SMB growth, wholesale opportunities, and strategic pursuits.
• Establish clear stage gates, decision rights, task ownership, durations, release status, and feedback loops.

"Clusternomics" and Capital Planning

• Develop cluster-level business cases, probability-weighted scenarios, payback views, and capital-prioritization methods.
• Partner with Finance on capital allocation, revenue assumptions, and release of incremental investment.
• Provide strategic guidance for OLT, cabinet, splitter, backbone, and route investments without displacing detailed engineering ownership.

What-If Analysis and Business Development

• Lead scenario planning for build-versus-buy, market entry, capacity investments, dark fiber, wholesale, hyperscaler, and M&A opportunities.
• Define criteria for when Network Planning engages Engineering and other downstream resources.
• Build decision-support models that allow the team to produce consistent go/no-go and pricing recommendations.

Data, GIS, and AI Enablement

• Set business requirements for an integrated planning ecosystem spanning IQGeo, Salesforce, ESRI, Broadband IQ, SQL, SharePoint, reporting, and Copilot.
• Champion consistent identifiers, governed datasets, data-quality controls, and durable source-of-truth practices.
• Own the accuracy and usability of planning reports and dashboards, including effective fact-checking before executive use.

Operating Rhythm and Organizational Leadership

• Build and lead a multidisciplinary planning capability spanning market planning, GIS, analytics, economics, and program execution.
• Establish weekly operating rhythms for playbooks, Win Room preparation, market reviews, decisions, and issue escalation.
• Remove barriers, navigate competing priorities, and maintain clarity of execution across functions.

Required Qualifications

• Relevant telecommunications, broadband infrastructure, network strategy, commercial operations, engineering, or planning experience, leadership experience in a cross-functional or strategic planning environment.
• Demonstrated experience building frameworks, operating models, or scalable planning processes.
• Strong operations and engineering literacy, executive communication, negotiation, and change-leadership skills.

Preferred Experience

• Fiber operator, carrier, utility, cable, data center, or hyperscaler environment.
• GIS-based planning, spatial analytics, and network modeling.
• M&A diligence, dark fiber economics, large strategic pursuits, or capital portfolio management.
• AI-enabled workflows, analytics platforms, data governance, and enterprise systems integration.

Leadership Profile

• Enterprise-minded builder who can create a function while delivering near-term results.
• Comfortable navigating ambiguity, personalities, organizational boundaries, and incomplete data.
• Hands-on owner who can manipulate data, challenge assumptions, review reports, and explain the business case.
• Balances strategic vision with disciplined blocking, tackling, follow-through, and accountability.

Measures of Success

• Clear, repeatable playbooks with visible ownership, status, and downstream tasks.
• Faster, more consistent investment and opportunity decisions.
• Improved alignment among Commercial Operations, Finance, Engineering, IT, Delivery, and Operations.
• Reliable market and cluster plans supported by governed data and transparent economics.
• Reduced ad hoc work and improved ability to move from reactive requests to proactive planning.

What we offer

• Core values that embody teamwork, integrity, and excellence
• A super talented team who values hard work, success, and fun :)
• Work/ Life Balance
• Flexible and generous Vacation and Wellness/Sick hours + 9 paid holidays
• 401K program

Diversity & Inclusion

Conterra celebrates and supports diversity for the benefit of our employees, our business, and our community. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and a workplace which leverages and thrives on the diversity and inclusion of everyone on our team to drive excellence throughout our organization.