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Senior Network Operations Manager Jobs (NOW HIRING)

Network Engineer - Senior

Washington, DC · On-site

$158K - $176K/yr

This role supports resilient and secure network operations for mission-critical federal systems and classified or sensitive mission environments. The Senior Network Engineer - Secure Communications ...

Network Engineer - Senior

Washington, DC · On-site

$117K - $160K/yr

This role involves providing senior network engineering support for secure communications and mission network environments, ensuring reliable and secure network operations for mission-critical ...

Network Operations Manager

Charlotte, NC

$83K - $111K/yr

The Network Operations Manager is responsible for end-to-end operational delivery of enterprise network services, ensuring availability, stability, and performance across a global 24x7 infrastructure.

Network Operations Manager

Indianapolis, IN · On-site +1

$81K - $109K/yr

Network Operations Manager The Network Operations Manager is a broadened role within Kimball Electronics Shared Services that reports to the Director of IT Infrastructure and Operations. This role is ...

Sr. Network Engineer

Nashville, TN · On-site

$100K - $137K/yr

This is a hands-on, senior-level role focused on network operations, advanced troubleshooting, and ... operational efficiency across the network * Manage vendor relationships and service contracts ...

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Senior Network Operations Manager information

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$22K

$101.7K

$146.5K

How much do senior network operations manager jobs pay per year?

As of Jul 30, 2026, the average yearly pay for senior network operations manager in the United States is $101,674.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $85,000.00 and $114,000.00 per year, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What is the difference between Senior Network Operations Manager vs Network Engineer?

AspectSenior Network Operations ManagerNetwork Engineer
CredentialsBachelor's in IT, Networking, or related field; often certifications like CCNP, CISSPBachelor's in Computer Science, Networking, or related; certifications like CCNA, CompTIA Network+
Work EnvironmentOversees network teams, manages operations, strategic planningDesigns, implements, and troubleshoots network systems
Employer & Industry UsageUsed in large organizations, telecom, IT servicesCommon in IT departments, tech companies, service providers

The Senior Network Operations Manager focuses on overseeing network teams and strategic management, while the Network Engineer is primarily responsible for designing and maintaining network infrastructure. Both roles require networking certifications and are vital in large organizations, but their daily responsibilities differ significantly.

What does a Senior Network Operations Manager do?

A Senior Network Operations Manager is responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations and maintenance of an organization's network infrastructure. They lead teams that monitor network performance, troubleshoot issues, and ensure network security and reliability. This role often involves strategic planning, budgeting, and collaborating with other departments to support business needs. Senior Network Operations Managers also develop policies and procedures to optimize network efficiency and minimize downtime.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a Senior Network Operations Manager, and why are they important?

To thrive as a Senior Network Operations Manager, you need deep expertise in network infrastructure management, troubleshooting, and a relevant degree or industry certifications such as CCNP or CompTIA Network+. Familiarity with network monitoring tools, ITIL processes, and systems like Cisco, Juniper, or SolarWinds is typically required. Exceptional leadership, communication, and problem-solving skills help manage teams and respond effectively to operational challenges. These abilities ensure reliable network performance, minimize downtime, and enable efficient support for business operations.

What are the primary challenges a Senior Network Operations Manager faces when overseeing large-scale network infrastructures?

A Senior Network Operations Manager often encounters challenges such as ensuring network reliability across multiple locations, managing rapid incident response, and balancing proactive maintenance with evolving business demands. Coordinating between different technical teams, vendors, and business units to implement upgrades or address outages can be complex. Additionally, staying ahead of cybersecurity threats while maintaining compliance and optimizing performance requires strong organizational and communication skills.
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Infographic showing various Senior Network Operations Manager job openings in the United States as of July 2026, with employment types broken down into 86% Full Time, 13% Part Time, and 1% Contract. Highlights an 94% Physical, 2% Hybrid, and 4% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $101,674 per year, or $48.9 per hour.

Senior Network Operations Manager

Black Mountain Dynamics

Mountain View, CA

$100K - $134K/yr

Full-time

Re-posted 12 hours ago


Job description

Role Overview

The Network Operations Manager owns the reliability, performance, and continuous operation of a global enterprise network supporting a leading autonomous-mobility client’s IT operations organization. This is a management role: you will lead the people, processes, and standards that keep critical network infrastructure running, bridging the gap between new-site deployment and long-term steady-state reliability.

Moving the team beyond reactive fire-fighting, you will own operational acceptance of newly deployed infrastructure, direct the response to major incidents, and mature the incident, change, and problem-management disciplines that govern a high-availability environment. You will set the operational strategy, develop the engineers who execute it, and serve as the senior escalation point and primary operational interface to client stakeholders.

Success in this role is measured by network availability, mean time to repair, the maturity of your team and its runbooks, and the confidence of the client’s IT leadership in day-to-day operations.

Key Responsibilities Team Leadership & Operational Ownership
  • Lead the operations team: Manage, mentor, and develop the Tier 1/2 NOC and network engineering staff supporting the account; own hiring, onboarding, performance, and career development.

  • 24/7 coverage: Own staffing models, on-call rotations, and shift scheduling to guarantee continuous coverage of a round-the-clock operation without single points of failure.

  • Operational accountability: Serve as the senior escalation owner and operational decision-maker; hold the team accountable for SLA attainment, quality, and adherence to standards.

  • Capacity planning: Forecast workload and headcount needs, and make the case for resourcing to both Black Mountain Dynamics and client leadership.

Service Reliability & Performance
  • Availability ownership: Own the availability and performance targets for the enterprise network (99.99%+ uptime), and be accountable for the metrics behind them.

  • MTTR & continuous improvement: Drive down Mean Time to Repair through better tooling, telemetry, escalation paths, and post-incident action tracking.

  • Observability strategy: Define what “good” looks like for monitoring, alerting, and telemetry, and ensure the team can see and act on network health proactively.

  • Reporting: Produce clear operational reporting (availability, incident trends, SLA performance, risk) for client and internal leadership.

Deployment Acceptance & Hypercare
  • Operational acceptance: Own the Network Acceptance Testing (NAT) framework, ensuring newly deployed infrastructure meets security, scalability, and observability standards before production sign-off.

  • Hypercare oversight: Direct the hypercare phase following new site launches and major upgrades; ensure anomalies are stabilized and infrastructure is cleanly handed over to steady-state operations.

  • Change execution governance: Oversee the authoring and review of high-risk Methods of Procedure (MOPs) for installing, staging, and upgrading firewalls, core switches, wireless access points, and UPS systems.

Critical Facilities & High-Bandwidth Operations
  • Critical environments: Ensure high-availability network operations across critical facilities (e.g., automated data centers, localized data-ingress hubs, and fleet maintenance facilities), accounting for power, cooling, and structured-cabling constraints.

  • High-bandwidth pipelines: Ensure high-performance pipelines optimized for massive data ingress/egress (such as local vehicle/fleet data offloading) run without network bottlenecks.

ITIL Governance — Incident, Change & Problem Management
  • Major incident command: Own the response to P1/P0 disruptions: coordinate the technical bridge, drive rapid service restoration, and communicate business impact to stakeholders in real time.

  • Change advisory: Own the change-management process for the account; chair or represent operations in change review, ensuring risk assessments minimize production downtime.

  • Problem management: Run the problem-management program: ensure Post-Incident Reviews (PIRs) are completed, chronic architectural weaknesses are identified, and permanent remediation is tracked to closure.

Automation, Standardization & Continuous Improvement
  • Toil reduction: Champion the shift from legacy, manual configuration toward automated, template-driven architectures to improve consistency and MTTR.

  • Runbook & standards ownership: Own the library of runbooks, configuration baselines, and troubleshooting playbooks that uplift the capability of Tier 1/2 NOC agents.

Stakeholder & Vendor Management
  • Client partnership: Act as the primary operational point of contact for the client’s IT operations leadership; translate complex network issues into clear, business-impact summaries.

  • Vendor & carrier management: Manage relationships with hardware vendors, carriers, and support partners, holding them to their SLAs and escalating effectively.

Qualifications & Experience Required
  • Experience: 8+ years in network engineering, enterprise deployment, or high-velocity network operations, including 3+ years in a formal people-management or team-lead capacity.

  • Operations leadership: Proven track record leading NOC or network operations teams in a 24/7, high-availability environment.

  • Critical infrastructure: Demonstrated ownership of network operations within critical infrastructure carrying high-availability requirements (99.99%+ uptime).

  • Technical depth: Strong hands-on background configuring and troubleshooting multi-vendor network devices via CLI and cloud-managed controllers (e.g., Cisco, Juniper, Arista, Palo Alto, Fortinet) — enough to lead engineers credibly and make sound architectural calls.

  • ITIL ownership: Practical, ownership-level command of ITIL Incident, Change, and Problem management.

  • Communication: Excellent verbal and written communication; able to translate technical detail into business-impact narratives for cross-functional and client stakeholders.

Preferred
  • Automation: Familiarity with network automation tooling (e.g., Python, Ansible, Terraform, NetBox, Jinja2) and how to apply it to deploy and audit infrastructure at scale.

  • Advanced routing & protocols: Working knowledge of BGP peering, OSPF, EVPN-VXLAN, stateful firewall policy, and complex traffic engineering.

  • Domain experience: Experience operating in data center, fleet, mission-critical, or autonomous / high-technology environments.

  • Managed-services / contractor context: Experience delivering operations as an embedded contractor or through an MSP relationship.

  • Education & certifications: B.S. in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience. Certifications such as CCNP/CCIE, PCNSE, JNCIP, ITIL, or PMP are a strong plus.