JOB DESCRIPTION FirstEnergy at a Glance We are a forward-thinking electric utility powered by a diverse team of employees committed to making customers' lives brighter, the environment better and our communities stronger. FirstEnergy (NYSE: FE) is dedicated to safety, reliability, and operational excellence. Headquartered in Akron, Ohio, FirstEnergy includes one of the nation's largest investor-owned electric systems, more than 24,500 miles of transmission lines that connect the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions, and a regulated generating fleet with a total capacity of 3,780 megawatts. About the Opportunity Optical Network Transport Specialist Location: Akron, OH preferred, or within the FirstEnergy service territory. This role may support remote work arrangements but requires availability to travel throughout the service territory as business needs, projects, maintenance activities, and restoration efforts require. Position Summary The Optical Network Transport Specialist is responsible for delivering and sustaining the high-capacity optical transport infrastructure that supports critical utility operations. This position is focused on the engineering, implementation, operation, and reliability of DWDM and OTN transport systems, along with related SONET, MPLS, and fiber-based communications platforms that connect substations, control centers, data centers, service centers, field locations, and other essential enterprise facilities. The successful candidate will help sustain and modernize optical transport systems that support operational reliability, grid visibility, enterprise connectivity, and secure communications. This role requires strong technical judgment, troubleshooting discipline, documentation accuracy, collaboration across multiple technical teams, and a commitment to safety, compliance, customer service, and continuous improvement. Key Responsibilities * Design, engineer, configure, implement, test, and support optical transport systems that provide resilient communications for substations, control centers, data centers, service centers, and field operational locations. * Support DWDM, OTN, SONET, MPLS, AMI, microwave, and related transport technologies used to deliver reliable enterprise and operational communications. * Perform optical capacity planning, wavelength assignment, circuit provisioning, protection planning, service turn-up, network expansion, and lifecycle sustainment activities. * Analyze optical performance metrics including receive and transmit power levels, span loss, optical signal-to-noise ratio, dispersion, attenuation, amplifier gain, fiber impairments, and related alarm conditions. * Troubleshoot optical transport service degradations and outages using network management systems, performance data, circuit records, fiber route information, OTDR results, optical power measurements, vendor tools, and field technician feedback. * Coordinate planned maintenance, equipment replacement, fiber cutover, circuit migration, software upgrade, and service restoration activities while identifying customer impact, outage risk, rollback steps, and stakeholder communication needs. * Develop and maintain accurate network documentation including circuit layouts, fiber assignments, port mappings, wavelength records, logical service paths, standard configurations, alarming references, and operational procedures. * Partner with Fiber Engineering, Field Communications, Data-LAN, Communication Engineering, Operations Technology, field technicians, vendors, and support contractors to