Routing and Switching Product Line Manager, IP Network Innovation and Modernization

Ciena is seeking a highly skilled Product Line Manager (PLM) to shape the evolution of Ciena’s IP Routing portfolio by identifying differentiated innovation opportunities and helping Service Provider customers modernize their networks. This role combines deep IP expertise, portfolio strategy, customer engagement, and the ability to influence across technical, commercial, and executive stakeholders. The successful candidate will translate market shifts, emerging technologies, and customer modernization needs into practical roadmap requirements, building alignment across PLM, Engineering, Account teams, and customers to turn new ideas into portfolio outcomes that create customer value and business growth. 

How You Will Contribute

• Identify, evaluate, and define innovative IP solution opportunities that drive meaningful differentiation and growth for Ciena, using both qualitative and quantitative analysis tools and techniques. 

• Collaborate closely with Account teams (and extended support functions) to engage lead customers, identify transformation opportunities, and facilitate adoption of products and solutions that accelerate customer network modernization and business outcomes. 

• Own the definition of Service Provider service/network transformation programs including actionable project plans and identified portfolio requirement gaps. Ability to factor in migration strategy, operational simplification, automation, resilience, performance, scalability, and service velocity. 

• Partner closely with the broader PLM organization to align innovation and transformation requirements with Ciena’s routing portfolio roadmap, ensuring cohesive solution delivery across product families. 

• Work with PLM and Engineering to translate market needs, customer transformation programs, and emerging AI-enabled operating models into detailed product requirements and roadmap priorities. 

• Provide thought leadership on how AI, automation, advanced routing technologies, and modern service orchestration enable new network capabilities, operational efficiencies, and revenue-generating services. 

• Track competitive developments and industry trends in Service Provider transformation, AI-based networking, automation frameworks, IP routing, and cloud-connected network architectures. 

• Produce high-quality content—roadmap narratives, whitepapers, transformation frameworks, customer presentations, and value propositions—to support executive engagement, customer workshops, and sales enablement. 

The Must Haves:

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering or related technical field; advanced degree preferred. 

• 10+ years of experience in Product Management, technical strategy, network architecture, consulting, or transformation leadership within routing, networking, telecom, cloud infrastructure, or Service Provider environments. 

• Proven track record of contributing to or leading large Service Provider network transformation projects, including modernization of IP/MPLS, metro, edge, access, cloud interconnect, or converged packet-optical network environments. 

Assets:

• IP routing protocols and technologies, including OSPF, IS-IS, BGP, MPLS, Segment Routing (SR-MPLS/SRv6), multicast, QoS, and VXLAN. 

• Service Provider architectures, including core, metro, access, edge, cloud, DCI, Cloud/AI datacenter, and multi-domain transport/networking environments. 

• Large-scale network transformation drivers such as legacy network simplification, convergence, automation, lifecycle migration, operational efficiency, service agility, and total cost of ownership improvement. 

• AI-driven networking use cases, including predictive analytics, anomaly detection, automated optimization, intent-based operations, and traffic forecasting. 

• Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively and drive alignment across product teams, engineering teams, sales teams, and customer stakeholders. 

• Strong communication, strategic thinking, and multi-level presentation skills, from engineering discussions to executive-level transformation narratives. 

• Experience defining routing solutions, AI/automation-driven network capabilities, or transformation frameworks for large-scale Service Provider deployments. 

• Clear track record of defining innovative solutions and driving them to adoption within Product Portfolio and Service Provider organizations. 

• Direct engagement experience with Tier-1/2 Service Providers on IP network modernization, backbone evolution, metro transformation, edge cloud, automation, or AI-related initiatives. 

• Experience supporting customer business cases, migration plans, architecture workshops, or executive-level transformation discussions. 

• Familiarity with ML analytics platforms, streaming telemetry, data pipelines, orchestration systems, cloud-native architectures, and operational support systems used in Service Provider environments. 

You combine deep networking expertise with a forward-looking understanding of how AI, automation, and large-scale transformation are reshaping Service Provider networks and service creation. You understand both innovation and execution: how to identify differentiated opportunities, translate them into practical roadmap requirements, and help customers move from legacy network models toward more automated, scalable, and service-agile architectures. You thrive in collaborative environments, ensuring that transformation-driven requirements and new innovations are successfully integrated into the broader Ciena roadmap to accelerate customer outcomes and business growth.