Principal PM — Data Center Networks & AI Infrastructure

Lumen; Dover (DE); Remote; USD 152,000 - 223,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

Life insurance

Retirement plan

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 proposed expansion efforts for right technical solutions and ROI, and lead cross-functional

Qualifications

• 8-10+ years of experience in product management, program management, network planning, or network engineering.
• 3+ years supporting metro, data center, optical, packet transport, or related network infrastructure.
• Deep metro network architecture knowledge including ring and mesh topologies, route and fiber diversity, point-of-presence and colocation siting, and protection and restoration strategies.
• Experience leading complex, cross-functional technical programs through planning, decision-making, and delivery.
• Ability to build quantitative demand, investment, and ROI models from incomplete data.
• Understanding of capital economics, including capital and operating expense trade-offs, payback, internal rate of return, utilization, and unit cost.
• Experience translating complex technical and financial analysis into concise recommendations for senior leaders.
• Ability to influence across Product, Engineering, Planning, Finance, Operations, and Sales in a matrixed environment.

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 leadership

Program management

Network planning

Financial modeling

Cross-functional leadership

Education

MBA or Eng 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 proposed expansion efforts for right technical solutions and ROI, and lead cross-functional