You are, first and foremost, an accomplished network architect for large-scale, mission-critical connectivity infrastructure. You bring deep expertise in national and international backbone design across terrestrial long-haul fibre and subsea systems, including landing-station connectivity, cable-landing diversity, and terrestrial route and duct engineering. You are fluent in optical transport (DWDM/OTN, coherent and client-side optics, ROADM and amplification/regeneration planning) and in IP backbone design, including IP/MPLS, segment routing, EVPN, traffic engineering, peering, transit and internet exchange, and high-capacity data-centre and customer interconnection. You understand how to design resilient, diverse networks free of unmanaged common-mode failure, using SRLG analysis, engineered failure-state capacity and physical-route evidence to prove your claims rather than assert them.
Across the delivery lifecycle, you are equally at home leading architecture and design reviews, carrier and technology-vendor governance, technical evaluation of backbone and subsea services, change control, cutover planning, and operational-readiness and handover to network operations. You have authored or materially shaped reference architectures, design standards, reusable patterns and architecture decision records at a hyperscale operator, carrier, or equivalent, and you know how to keep an architecture modular and vendor-neutral so the business can flex across managed services, wavelengths, dark fibre and subsea assets as demand and economics change. You are comfortable engaging carriers, subsea consortia, internet exchanges and major equipment vendors, and you can drive value engineering and sustainability outcomes without compromising resilience or performance.
Above all, you have the temperament of a senior technical leader operating across geographies: strong systems thinking, calm judgement under delivery and incident pressure, the confidence to challenge design and vendor assumptions constructively, and the communication skill to carry a room of network engineers, a customer technical review, and an executive readout with equal clarity. You bring commercial awareness, comfort operating across cultures and time zones, and a genuine passion for building AI-ready network connectivity that performs reliably from day one and positions Firmus as a leader in the field.