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Digital Connectivity, Fiber, 5G, Cloud and Data Center Specialist
Opportunity track: MENA-EE
Engagement: Contingent individual consultant; engagement may be direct or through an eligible U.S. consulting firm
Location: Remote - United States, with possible international travel
Primary promotion location: Ashburn, Virginia 20147
Anticipated consulting fee: $150-$300 per hour, or a negotiated fixed price by work package
The opportunity
Axyde is building a senior expert bench for anticipated U.S. government-funded project-scoping assignments involving national, regional, metropolitan, and last-mile connectivity; terrestrial and subsea fiber; mobile and fixed wireless; 5G; towers; carrier-neutral facilities; internet exchanges; cloud and edge infrastructure; data centers; and AI-enabling infrastructure across the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, Eurasia, and adjacent markets.
The selected specialist will help Axyde determine whether proposed digital-infrastructure projects have a credible technical architecture, supportable demand and utilization assumptions, an implementable deployment pathway, resilient and secure infrastructure dependencies, realistic commercial assumptions, and an appropriately designed next-stage feasibility study, technical-assistance assignment, or pilot.
Assignments may begin with incomplete data and require rapid, independent, and defensible conclusions. Axyde welcomes specialists whose principal strength is fiber, subsea connectivity, mobile networks, spectrum, broadband, cloud, data centers, edge computing, or AI infrastructure. Applicants are not expected to be equally expert in every digital-infrastructure domain.
This is an early-stage project-scoping role. It does not authorize the consultant to certify cybersecurity, make regulatory determinations, provide legal advice, or approve final network or facility designs outside the consultant's qualifications and assignment-specific authority.
Potential responsibilities

• Evaluate network and facility architectures, coverage, capacity, latency, availability, resilience, redundancy, interoperability, scalability, technology choices, and deployment maturity.
• Assess terrestrial and subsea fiber routes, metro and backbone networks, backhaul, middle-mile and last-mile strategies, landing stations, interconnection, peering, internet exchanges, and cross-border connectivity.
• Evaluate mobile and fixed-wireless concepts, spectrum assumptions, radio-access networks, towers, small cells, microwave or satellite backhaul, core networks, and 4G-to-5G migration strategies.
• Review broadband-coverage, affordability, adoption, service-quality, wholesale-access, open-access, universal-service, and digital-inclusion assumptions.
• Evaluate cloud, sovereign-cloud, edge-computing, content-delivery, carrier-neutral, and managed-service concepts, including workload, customer, utilization, and operating-model assumptions.
• Evaluate data-center and AI-infrastructure concepts, including location, land, electrical capacity, redundancy, backup generation, cooling, water, fiber diversity, rack density, expandability, operations, and uptime objectives.
• Assess power availability, grid reliability, renewable-energy options, energy storage, water use, heat rejection, environmental conditions, construction logistics, and other critical data-center dependencies.
• Identify spectrum, licensing, rights-of-way, permitting, interconnection, data-governance, localization, privacy, trusted-supplier, procurement, supply-chain, interoperability, cybersecurity-interface, and implementation issues at a project-scoping level.
• Develop or independently review preliminary subscribers, traffic, utilization, capacity, power, PUE, CAPEX, OPEX, tariff, revenue, schedule, and deployment assumptions at a level appropriate to the available information.
• Develop or review technical tasks, required qualifications, deliverables, schedules, and budgets for feasibility studies, technical assistance, pilots, network studies, site-selection studies, and digital-infrastructure programs.
• Compare technical and commercial alternatives and identify material data gaps, field surveys, demand studies, engineering analyses, decision criteria, risk mitigations, and stage-gate recommendations.
• Assess potential participation by U.S. networking, cloud, data-center, software, cybersecurity, engineering, and service providers and relevant foreign competition.
• Participate in sponsor interviews, technical-diligence calls, and occasional site visits involving operators, regulators, ministries, cloud and colocation providers, utilities, project sponsors, financiers, and prospective U.S. suppliers.
• Contribute to concept consultations, initial assessments, project reports, presentations, sector deep dives, export estimates, and implementation recommendations.
• Clearly distinguish source information, modeled results, sponsor claims, professional judgments, assumptions, limitations, and matters requiring validation by licensed engineers, operators, regulators, cybersecurity specialists, utilities, or other authorities.

Required qualifications

• Degree in telecommunications, electrical engineering, computer engineering, network engineering, information systems, data-center engineering, or a closely related field.
• At least 10 years of directly relevant telecommunications, broadband, wireless, cloud, data-center, network-planning, infrastructure-development, operations, engineering, or consulting experience.
• Demonstrated experience evaluating, planning, designing, developing, operating, or independently reviewing fiber, wireless, mobile, cloud, edge, data-center, or related digital-infrastructure projects.
• Experience translating technical, demand, regulatory, commercial, and infrastructure findings into practical development plans, scopes of work, schedules, budgets, decision criteria, and risk-mitigation measures.
• Ability to integrate network, facility, utility, market, regulatory, resilience, cybersecurity-interface, supply-chain, and implementation considerations without overstating the accuracy of early-stage information.
• Strong analytical writing, quantitative reasoning, source evaluation, and stakeholder-interview skills, with the ability to work under compressed schedules.
• Contract-required status: The individual performing the work must be either a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident of the United States (green-card holder). Other forms of U.S. work authorization do not satisfy the stated requirements of the anticipated contract. A consultant engaged directly as an individual must maintain a principal place of business in the United States. A consultant proposed through a firm must be employed or engaged through an entity that independently satisfies the solicitation's U.S.-firm requirements.

Preferred qualifications

• Professional Engineer, BICSI, data-center, cloud, telecommunications, network, project-management, or another directly relevant professional credential.
• Experience with subsea cables, fiber backbones, internet exchanges, spectrum planning, 5G, Open RAN, fixed wireless, satellite integration, or rural broadband.
• Experience with hyperscale, colocation, carrier-neutral, edge, sovereign-cloud, high-performance-computing, or AI data-center projects.
• Familiarity with data-center resilience, electrical and cooling systems, high-density workloads, efficiency metrics, water constraints, commissioning, and operating-readiness requirements.
• Experience preparing or independently reviewing feasibility-study, technical-assistance, pilot, network-planning, data-center, site-selection, or infrastructure-integration scopes and budgets.
• Familiarity with project finance, public-private partnerships, universal-service programs, development finance, export credit, or government digital programs.
• Experience evaluating U.S.-supplied equipment, software, cloud services, engineering, or other technology participation in international projects.
• Regional experience in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, the Western Balkans, Caucasus, Moldova, Central Asia, or adjacent markets.

Engagement conditions
This is a contingent consulting opportunity, not an offer of full-time employment. No award, assignment, minimum number of hours, or minimum compensation is guaranteed. Engagement depends on contract award, assignment fit, eligibility, conflicts, availability, successful completion of Axyde's due diligence, and agreement on scope and pricing. The stated fee range is an anticipated range; the final rate or fixed price will depend on experience, role, work-package requirements, and applicable cost-reasonableness requirements.
Some assignments may require rapid analysis, interviews, irregular coordination across time zones, or international travel. Travel requirements, approvals, insurance, site-access and information-security conditions, and reimbursable costs will be addressed in the applicable consulting agreement or work order.
Participation in a U.S. Trade and Development Agency project-scoping assignment may make the participating consultant or subcontracting entity ineligible to compete-whether as a prime contractor, subcontractor, or otherwise-for certain USTDA-funded follow-on activities resulting from that assignment, unless USTDA grants a waiver. Axyde will disclose the applicable restriction and obtain written acceptance before issuing a work order.
Selected specialists may be asked for written permission to include their name, qualifications, and resume in a proposal. Applying does not by itself authorize Axyde to represent that an applicant has committed to a proposal or assignment.
Work performed under an awarded contract will be subject to applicable confidentiality, data-rights, export-control, information-security, professional-responsibility, and conflict-of-interest requirements. Any proprietary network models, designs, datasets, software, methodologies, or background intellectual property should be identified before an assignment begins.
How to apply
Apply through Axyde's online application form using the heading MENA-EE - Digital Connectivity, Fiber, 5G, Cloud and Data Center Specialist. Please provide:

• A resume or CV of no more than three pages.
• Two or three concise, directly relevant project examples identifying your role, jurisdiction, technology or facility type, scale or capacity where disclosable, project stage, principal questions, and the resulting work product or decision.
• Your principal technology, facility, business-model, regulatory, and regional areas of expertise.
• Your U.S. location, travel availability, availability during the anticipated performance period, and proposed hourly rate or fixed-price basis.
• A self-attestation that you are either a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident and, if you would contract directly as an individual, that your principal place of business is in the United States. Applicants proposing engagement through a firm should identify the firm and confirm that it meets the applicable solicitation definition of a U.S. firm.
• Any relevant professional licenses, technical certifications, operator experience, software expertise, or language capabilities.
• Any known organizational conflicts, current client restrictions, vendor relationships, investment interests, or planned pursuits of potentially related USTDA-funded work.

Do not submit a passport, green card, Social Security number, passwords, credentials, network diagrams, precise critical-facility locations, vulnerability information, customer data, traffic data, proprietary designs, export-controlled information, source-selection-sensitive information, or client-confidential material. Public, authorized, and appropriately anonymized project descriptions are sufficient for the initial application. Axyde will request only the documentation and information needed at the appropriate stage of selection and engagement.
Axyde considers qualified applicants without regard to any status protected by applicable law. The citizenship or permanent-residence limitation above applies solely to work covered by the stated U.S. government contract requirements.