VP, IMNI Field CTO

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Minnesota.

📋 Description

• Define the infrastructure strategy, reference architecture, standards, investment priorities, and multi-year roadmap for GDT's carrier-grade services.

• Provide counsel to telecommunications and service-provider leaders while acting as an executive sponsor for senior strategic-account stakeholders.

• Lead evaluations, target-state architectures, migration roadmaps, governance, testing, acceptance criteria, and operational transition plans.

• Deliver technical leadership across various domains including networking, telecom cloud, data center, edge, compute, storage, automation, observability, and operations.

• Establish criteria for availability, resiliency, redundancy, capacity, performance, disaster recovery, business continuity, security, DDoS protection, and service-level outcomes.

• Oversee the technical elements of strategic initiatives, which encompass discovery, solution design, bills of materials, statements of work, implementation plans, pricing inputs, RFP responses, demonstrations, ROI/TCO narratives, and executive proposals.

• Convert technical recommendations into customer outcomes and assess opportunities based on business value, technical suitability, funding, delivery readiness, operational impact, and service potential.

• Facilitate executive briefings, architecture reviews, workshops, proofs of concept, customer advisory sessions, partner engagements, analyst briefings, conferences, and field activities.

• Advocate for customer and service-provider requirements within the Architecture, Engineering, Product, Marketing, Sales, Implementation, and Managed Services teams.

• Develop strategic partnerships, mentor architects and engineers, and promote consistent delivery practices.

• Handle significant technical escalations and architectural decisions; assess emerging technologies and standards; oversee availability, resiliency, performance, customer outcomes, service adoption, and financial contributions.

⛳️ Requirements

• Over 15 years of experience in telecommunications, service-provider infrastructure, network and systems architecture, cloud and edge infrastructure, technology strategy, consulting, professional services, or related leadership positions.

• Extensive customer-facing and executive advisory experience.

• Profound expertise in telecommunications, service-provider, carrier-grade, or mission-critical infrastructure environments.

• Advanced knowledge of IP routing and transport protocols, including BGP, OSPF/IS-IS, MPLS, EVPN/VXLAN, segment routing, SRv6, SDN, SD-WAN, QoS, traffic engineering, and network automation.

• Practical knowledge of 4G/5G, telecom cloud, NFV/CNF, Kubernetes, OpenStack, edge computing, distributed systems, bare-metal platforms, and high-performance storage.

• Strong grasp of high availability, resiliency, capacity and performance engineering, observability, telemetry, service assurance, automation, incident management, and disaster recovery.

• Familiarity with secure-by-design infrastructure, identity management, segmentation, DDoS protection, vulnerability management, supply-chain risk, compliance, and operational security.

• Capability to translate business, financial, network, and technical strategies into scalable, measurable, defensible solutions and clear executive decisions.

• Strong commercial and consulting skills, along with executive communication, presentation, negotiation, facilitation, technical storytelling, and customer relationship abilities.

• Proficiency in leading through influence, managing ambiguity, coaching technical teams, and collaborating across sales, architecture, engineering, implementation, managed services, and partner organizations.

• Experience with multi-vendor ecosystems.

• Knowledge of IETF, IEEE, 3GPP, ETSI, MEF, TM Forum, ITU-T, and relevant open-source communities.

• Preferred relevant certifications include CCIE/CCDE, CCNP Service Provider, JNCIE/JNCIP, Nokia Service Routing, HPE Aruba or Juniper, cloud architecture, Kubernetes, OpenStack, TOGAF, SABSA, ITIL, PMP, or equivalent certifications.

🏝️ Benefits

• Opportunities for career development.

• Access to cutting-edge technology.

• A collaborative work environment.

• A people-first, inclusive culture.

• Opportunities for growth and innovation.