Overview
The Access Network Architect is responsible for developing and maintaining the architecture, engineering standards, automation, and lifecycle strategy for the broadband access network.
Reporting to Kerry Hull, this role serves as the senior technical authority for the access environment, establishing standards across access cabinets, OLTs, PON architecture, ONTs, optical performance, provisioning, telemetry, and network automation.
This is a hands-on architecture role. The architect will define standards and also build and maintain automation supporting ONT provisioning, service activation, configuration validation, inventory reconciliation, optical-health monitoring, and other repeatable access-network functions. The objective is an access network that is standardized, automated, observable, repeatable, and operationally supportable at scale.
Reports To: Director of Network Transport
Department: Network Engineering and NOC
Job Status: Exempt
Responsibilities:
Access Network Architecture
- Own the end-to-end technical architecture of the broadband access network.
- Define approved design patterns for cabinets, OLTs, PON, ONTs, optical distribution, management, telemetry, and service delivery.
- Establish scalable designs for new access sites, cabinet deployments, expansions, and technology upgrades.
- Develop migration strategies for GPON, XGS-PON, and subsequent access technologies.
- Evaluate emerging access technologies and make recommendations based on supportability, reliability, automation readiness, and lifecycle impact.
Cabinet & Site Standards
- Develop and maintain repeatable cabinet and site engineering standards, including cabinet layouts, rack elevations, equipment placement, power distribution, AC/DC requirements, battery backup, generator integration, grounding and bonding, fiber management, patch panels, cabling, labeling, environmental monitoring, management connectivity, and out-of-band access where applicable.
- Define commissioning, acceptance, documentation, and as-built requirements so that new access sites follow a consistent engineering blueprint rather than being independently designed each time.
OLT Architecture & Standards
- Maintain standard OLT configurations, approved software and firmware, chassis and line-card standards, uplink architecture, VLAN strategy, QoS, management addressing, authentication, security, SNMP/telemetry, syslog, NTP, naming, alarm profiles, service profiles, capacity thresholds, backups, and upgrade procedures.
- Maintain an approved and auditable configuration baseline for each supported OLT platform.
- Lead technical reviews with access vendors, including ADTRAN and other suppliers, covering defects, features, software releases, interoperability, and roadmap changes.
PON & Optical Architecture
- Define GPON and XGS-PON standards, including split ratios, optical budgets, PON utilization, fiber assignments, subscriber distribution, capacity thresholds, migrations, turn-up, and acceptance testing.
- Establish OLT and ONT transmit/receive expectations, warning and critical optical thresholds, fiber-loss budgets, conditioning requirements, and troubleshooting guidance.
- Ensure optical telemetry is interpreted consistently by Care, the NOC, field teams, and automated monitoring systems.
ONT Standards & Lifecycle Management
- Own standards for approved ONT models, firmware, service compatibility, Ethernet behavior, management, provisioning profiles, performance monitoring, optical monitoring, alarms, replacement criteria, and lifecycle management.
- Maintain compatibility among ONTs, OLT software, service offerings, provisioning workflows, and network automation.
Provisioning Architecture
- Own the technical design and documentation of the access provisioning lifecycle: Service Request Automation OLT PON ONT Service Profile Activation Validation.
- Define how systems determine the correct OLT, PON, ONT identity, service profile, VLAN, bandwidth profile, subscriber attributes, activation state, and validation state.
- Document both the intended workflow and known failure modes across network, inventory, OSS/BSS, and automation systems.
Automation Engineering
- Design, build, test, document, and maintain production-quality automation for ONT discovery and activation, service provisioning, configuration validation, firmware validation, optical-health monitoring, PON-capacity monitoring, alarm correlation, inventory reconciliation, compliance auditing, and controlled remediation.
- Use technologies such as Python, REST APIs, JSON, SQL, Git, vendor APIs, network-management APIs, and workflow or orchestration platforms.
- Apply software-engineering disciplines including source control, peer review, logging, error handling, rollback considerations, testing, and operational documentation.
Provisioning Exceptions & Failure Analysis
- Develop detection and reporting for repeated activation attempts, duplicate provisioning, ONTs without corresponding automation, incorrect service profiles, incorrect OLT/PON assignments, failed or partial activations, drift, retry loops, orphaned configurations, and inventory mismatches.
- Create a consistent method for classifying conditions as Healthy Automation, Automation Failure, Network Failure, Inventory/Data Issue, or Manual Intervention.
- Turn recurring provisioning problems into visible, measurable, and actionable failure conditions.
Network Observability
- Define dashboards, telemetry, alarms, and operational thresholds for ONT optical levels, PON utilization, OLT resources, subscriber counts, ONT state and uptime, provisioning failures, automation retries, firmware compliance, and configuration compliance.
- Partner with the Care and NOC to improve signal quality, reduce unnecessary alarm noise, and establish clear escalation criteria.
Standards, Documentation & Governance
- Create and maintain the Access Network Architecture Standard, Cabinet Design Standard, OLT Configuration Standard, PON Engineering Standard, ONT Hardware Standard, Optical Power Standard, Naming Standard, Provisioning Architecture Standard, Automation Standard, Monitoring Standard, Acceptance Standard, lifecycle standards, and troubleshooting guides.
- Maintain approved hardware, firmware, configurations, service profiles, naming conventions, templates, exception records, and technical bulletins.
- Review designs and changes for compliance, document approved exceptions, and drive nonstandard deployments toward remediation.
- Treat documentation as part of the engineering deliverable, with the same accountability as implementation.
Cross-Functional & Vendor Leadership
- Work closely with Network Engineering, the Care, NOC, IT/Software Development, Product, Provisioning/OSS teams, and vendors.
- Ensure standards can be constructed, commissioned, automated, monitored, supported, and troubleshot at scale.
- Serve as a senior technical escalation point for access-network architecture, interoperability, provisioning, and platform defects.
Qualifications
Qualifications
Required Qualifications
- Strong hands-on knowledge of GPON and XGS-PON, OLT and ONT platforms, Ethernet/IP networking, VLANs, QoS, subscriber provisioning, and service profiles.
- Strong understanding of optical power, fiber loss, splitters, optical budgets, and turn-up testing.
- Demonstrated experience troubleshooting complex cabinet, OLT, PON, ONT, and provisioning issues across multiple systems.
- Experience with network automation and APIs, with working knowledge of Python, SQL, JSON, REST APIs, and Git.
- Experience with telemetry, alarms, network-management platforms, configuration validation, and compliance reporting.
- Ability to translate recurring operational problems into architecture, standards, tooling, or automation.
- Ability to independently lead technical investigations and make lifecycle recommendations.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in FTTH/FTTP broadband networks and geographically distributed access environments.
- Experience with ADTRAN access platforms and automated ONT provisioning.
- Experience integrating OSS/BSS, inventory, activation, and network-management systems.
- Experience with source-of-truth platforms such as NetBox and observability platforms such as Datadog.
- Experience developing network scripts, APIs, orchestration workflows, configuration-compliance checks, and automated validation.
- Experience creating engineering standards, acceptance criteria, and technical governance for access infrastructure.
Success Measures
- New access cabinets and sites consistently follow approved engineering standards.
- OLT configurations and software baselines are standardized, version-controlled, and auditable.
- PON and optical designs are predictable, repeatable, and supported by measurable acceptance criteria.
- ONT hardware, firmware, service profiles, and lifecycle standards are clearly defined.
- Provisioning behavior is documented end to end, including ownership and failure states.
- Automation failures and network/inventory mismatches are detected before they become recurring customer-impacting conditions.
- Repetitive engineering, validation, and provisioning activities are increasingly automated.
- NOC and field teams have clear operational thresholds and troubleshooting standards
