Associate Director, Network Operations (Fibre & Rural Telephony) at IHS Towers

IHS Towers is the largest independent mobile telecommunications infrastructure provider in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Founded in 2001, IHS provides services across the full tower value chain – colocation on owned towers, deployment and managed services.

Today IHS Towers has operations in Nigeria, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Zambia and Rwanda. Following the recent acquisitions of MTN and Etisalat’s tower portfolios in Nigeria, IHS owns over 23,300 towers in Africa.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Associate Director, Network Operations (Fibre & Rural Telephony)

Location: Lagos, Nigeria

Description

• We are currently recruiting for an Associate Director, Network Operations (Fibre & Rural Telephony) who will Lead the network operations team to guarantee 24/7 network service and performance monitoring and set operational priorities/ key performance indicators (KPIs) for network operations across fibre and rural telephony.

Key Roles & Responsibilities

• Ensure the network achieves minimum service availability of 99.995% or better.
• Ensure the network delivers on Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) parameters for on-net components as agreed with customers.
• Oversee design and implementation of network performance management systems and processes for effective delivery of required network service levels.
• Define and drive implementation of processes for escalating and resolving system/ component/ service outages within defined timelines. Work with engineering teams to formulate, test and implement restoration plans for use in the event of network outages.
• Own the disaster recovery and business continuity plan for fibre and rural telephony, including supporting business processes and ongoing review.
• Lead the network operations team in formulating routine preventive maintenance plans for different elements/ components which make up the network.
• Ensure all network, customer and process documents are maintained, including design, as-built, capacity utilization, network availability, and spares holding (location and availability) documents.
• Support the network planning and implementation team in provisioning (network, customer or other) within agreed/ committed timelines.
• Evaluate and drive improvements to the current network operations framework, processes and procedures to meet evolving technology trends and prepare the business for future network systems and technology requirements.
• Coordinate service acceptance processes, ensuring testing and acceptance parameters are achieved and services effectively handed over to customers to enable revenue generation and assurance over the service contract lifetime.
• Lead all vendor-facing interactions, ensuring that vendors’ equipment and services meet technical specifications set by the business. Also hold vendors accountable for achieving set KPIs and maintaining adequate spares/ support as per contract.
• Collaborate with the Network Operations Centre (NOC) management on sharing of NOC resources/ facilities.
• Deliver regular network performance reports and insights to management in order to facilitate strategy and planning to improve service delivery and revenue assurance.
• Perform other tasks and duties as assigned by the Line Manager.

Experience & Qualifications Required

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Electronics Engineering, or related degree.
• Advanced degree in any of the above disciplines or an MBA/ relevant professional certifications will be an asset.
• +15 years’ relevant experience, including most recent 10 years in the Operations and Maintenance (O&M) field, managing NOC environments for a large mobile network operator (MNO), data centre or ISP, etc.

Organizational Competencies:

• Be Bold
• Customer Focus
• Innovation
• Integrity

Functional Competencies:

• Engineering Management
• Project Management
• Business Process Design & Re-Engineering
• Active & Passive Network Operations & Management
• Business Communication
• RF/ Open RAN
• Transmission Networks (Fibre/Satellite/Microwave)
• Solid Systems Integration
• SDH, DWDM, IP/MPLS, TCP IP & Other Optical and/ or IP-based Network Technologies & Solutions

Behavioural Competencies:

• Collaboration & Teamwork
• Leading & Influencing

Application Closing Date
10th March, 2021.