Underline starts with our people.

At Underline, we've rapidly built a culture around ownership, trust, community, and innovation. Underline is dedicated to cultivating a growth environment where people feel valued, work with a purpose of mission, are personally rewarded, and are professionally challenged.

Are you ready to join this team and transform American communities?

Underline was founded in 2019 with a singular mission: to ensure the vibrancy of our nation through building intelligent community infrastructure in a socially equitable manner. We work with American communities to design, finance, and construct open access fiber-optic networks. These networks are critical to secure internet access that’s fast, affordable, and fair. As open access networks, this infrastructure is also the essential foundation for distributed healthcare services, new wireless solutions, and resilient infrastructure including modernized water systems and responsible energy creation. Our first two projects are in Colorado Springs and Fountain, Colorado.

As the Director of Network Operations, you will be responsible for the strategic direction and operational excellence of our network infrastructure. You will lead the team that manages all network systems, from routing and transport to performance monitoring and capacity planning. This role is accountable for strategic initiatives  and daily operations, ensuring the network is scalable and highly available to meet the demands of our growing client base.

You will act as a key partner to our Engineering, Product, and Client Services teams,  translating business needs into solutions. Your deep understanding of network technologies will enable you to drive the design and implementation of next-generation network solutions. A core part of your role will be to lead all incident management efforts . Your expertise in frameworks like ITIL will be crucial in developing and enforcing best practices for incident response, problem management, and change management, ensuring a culture of continuous improvement and operational rigor.

Why Join Us

• You’ll lead a high-impact team and collaborate directly with senior leaders across every major function.
• You will be instrumental in ensuring the stability and reliability of our network, which is the cornerstone of our business. Your leadership will directly contribute to operational continuity and client trust.
• You will also be a key leader in defining and implementing best-in-class operational processes and network tooling, ensuring our network team is agile and effective in a fast-paced environment.

• You're a builder at heart—of networks, processes, and teams—and you thrive in environments where you can identify opportunities and build efficiencies. 
• You can walk into a room of network engineers or field technicians, ask the right questions, and quickly uncover the real problem behind a trouble ticket or performance complaint.
• You’ve led projects that transitioned network monitoring from manual checks and fragmented spreadsheets to reliable, automated dashboards and proactive alerting systems.
• You believe network reliability isn't just about uptime; it's about building disciplined operational pipelines that deliver consistent and predictable performance for customers.
• You’re comfortable owning the full lifecycle from requirements gathering for new network segments to budgeting, implementation, and rollout.
• You’re motivated by supporting others—your team, your peers, and the entire company—with a network that just works.
• You're excited by the idea of stepping into a role that has high ambiguity today—but high impact tomorrow.

• Lead the Network Operations Team: Provide day-to-day supervision for our local and national Network Engineering Operations teams, ensuring high availability across our multi-site network.
• Build Partnerships: Collaborate with teams in infrastructure, architecture, applications, client support, and field operations to ensure seamless cross-functional workflows.
• Ensure Team Expertise: Guarantee team members receive thorough, timely training on both new and existing job functions.
• Maintain Technical Knowledge: Stay an expert on all network technology supporting our operations, including switches, routers, firewalls, and protocols like BGP, TCP/IP, VXLAN, and QinQ.
• Act as an SME: Serve as a subject matter expert (SME), providing advanced support and troubleshooting for complex network issues.
• Drive Automation: Develop and implement automation solutions for configuring and monitoring network devices to reduce manual tasks and improve service delivery.
• Optimize Operations: Proactively identify and eliminate repetitive work by developing and implementing automation scripts.
• Oversee Problem Resolution: Ensure all operational problems are identified, escalated, communicated, and resolved promptly, with a focus on applying a root cause analysis to prevent future issues.
• Manage Key Processes: Oversee the smooth operations of the Service Desk, on-call support, and ITIL processes including problem, incident, and change management.
• Monitor and Maintain: Develop and implement maintenance procedures, monitor system health, gather performance statistics, and troubleshoot reported errors and alarms.
• Track Performance: Provide regular operational metrics and lead continuous improvement initiatives using key performance indicators (KPIs) and other measurements.
• Enforce SLAs: Supervise the network team's ticket responses to ensure all issues are handled within defined service level agreements.
• Ensure Compliance: Confirm that all network documentation and practices for current and future data centers are in line with compliance, audit, and management requirements.
• Improve Emergency Response: Lead and refine our emergency response and escalation procedures, conducting detailed postmortems to systematically address issues and prevent reoccurrences.
• Drive Cross-functional Solutions: Engage with teams across the company to deeply understand their needs and develop solutions that improve efficiency, visibility, and control.
• Manage Budget & Vendors: Own the Network Operations Center budget, manage spending, and oversee vendor relationships and service delivery.

• 8+ years of experience in network operations, with 3-5 years in a senior leadership or director role within a telecommunications or internet service provider (ISP) environment.
• Demonstrated success in leading and scaling a Network Operations Center (NOC) to support a growing customer base.
• Strong experience with core service provider technologies and protocols, including BGP, OSPF, MPLS, VLANs, and QinQ.
• Proven track record in managing and optimizing fiber-based networks, DWDM transport, and last-mile access technologies (e.g., GPON, XGS-PON).
• Experience owning and managing operational systems, including ticketing systems (e.g., ServiceNow), network monitoring tools (e.g., SolarWinds, Zabbix), and performance management platforms.
• Cybersecurity leadership experience specific to network infrastructure, including the implementation of firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and access control policies in a service provider context.
• Experience managing large-scale operational budgets and negotiating contracts with key network vendors and service providers (e.g., equipment manufacturers, dark fiber providers).

• Familiarity with regulatory or compliance frameworks relevant to telecommunications (e.g., CALEA, FCC regulations).
• Experience with network automation and scripting using languages like Python or Ansible.
• Hands-on experience with DDoS mitigation platforms and strategies.
• Background in smart city technology or large-scale, multi-purpose fiber deployments.