Principal PM: AI-Ready Data Center Networks

Lumen; Washington (District of Columbia); Remote; USD 167,000 - 223,000; Full time

Job summary

Lumen is seeking a Principal Product Manager to shape the architecture and expansion strategy for our data center metro networks. This highly visible, internal-facing role combines product leadership, technical diligence, and program execution to ensure network investments deliver meaningful business value.

You will own the roadmap for internal network products that enable external services, evaluate expansion efforts, and lead cross-functional teams through delivery.

Qualifications

• 8-10+ years of experience in product management, program management, network planning, or network engineering.
• 3+ years of experience supporting metro, data center, optical, packet transport, or related network infrastructure.
• Strong knowledge of metro network architecture, including ring and mesh topologies, route and fiber diversity, point-of-presence and colocation siting, and protection and restoration strategies.

Responsibilities

• Own the product strategy, requirements, and multi-year architectural roadmap for data center metro network solutions and expansion programs.
• Translate topology, diversity, capacity, transport, optical-layer, and point-of-presence decisions into repeatable configurations and reference designs.
• Lead cross-functional expansion programs from evaluation through delivery, coordinating teams, dependencies, milestones, risks, and executive status reporting.
• Evaluate proposed network investments using demand, utilization, capital efficiency, revenue potential, and return-on-investment analysis.
• Establish a consistent framework for prioritizing, approving, deferring, or redesigning metro network upgrades and expansion efforts.
• Build demand models that combine contracted demand, pipeline, market signals, customer architecture plans, and forecast scenarios.
• Assess whether existing internal products and architectural solutions remain the right platforms for future growth, including lower-cost alternatives and associated trade-offs.
• Partner with Product, Network Planning, Engineering, Finance, Operations, Service Delivery, and Sales to drive decisions and execution.

Skills

Product management

Program management

Network planning

Network engineering

Education

MBA

Engineering degree

Tools

Excel

Power BI

SQL

Python

Job description

Lumen is seeking a Principal Product Manager to shape the architecture and expansion strategy for our data center metro networks. This highly visible, internal-facing role combines product leadership, technical diligence, and program execution to ensure network investments deliver meaningful business value.

You will own the roadmap for internal network products that enable external services, evaluate expansion efforts, and lead cross-functional teams through delivery.