Senior Associate, Customer Technical Advocate

As the global leader in high-speed connectivity, Ciena is committed to a people-first approach. Our teams enjoy a culture focused on prioritizing a flexible work environment that empowers individual growth, well-being, and belonging. We're a technology company that leads with our humanity—driving our business priorities alongside meaningful social, community, and societal impact.

As a Senior Associate, Customer Technical Advocate (CTA), you will be responsible for developing and nurturing the technical, service-oriented relationship between Ciena's Top Customers and the Global Services and Support team in a specific region or market. The Senior Associate within Global Customer Advocacy works in concert with the Customer Service Operations team, promoting retention, loyalty and advocacy by developing and driving a World Class Customer Experience by providing a strong, proactive Technical Advocacy presence towards our customers.

The Technical Advocate is the primary technical contact for customer onboarding, escalation management, and proactive technical engagement throughout the customer's lifecycle and interactions with Ciena Global Services and Support.

The Contribution:

• Proactively monitor and engage on technical support case work to ensure all service level objectives and agreements are met.

• Assume the role of escalation manager for extended outages and highly escalated Services and Support related issues. Provide timely communication updates, resolution strategies and action plan deliverables.

• Coordinate and facilitate customer business meetings to answer technical questions or concerns related to product support issues on Ciena hardware and software platforms.

• Provide end-to-end analysis of technical issues and the customer experience by conducting detailed post-mortem reviews resulting in procedures, best practices recommendations and/or direct actions that will increase customer delight.

• Establish a clear line of communication back into the Services and Support organization ensuring awareness of network changes, growth activities and new product implementations occurring on the customers' network.

• Translate and communicate complex technical root cause analysis reports and relevant product bulletins between Ciena subject matter experts and the customer.

• Work with our Services and Support delivery teams closely monitoring Customer Success Indicators, ensuring post sales technical issues are proactively identified and addressed. Success will evidence itself in the following ways:

• Timely resolution of escalated customer network issues and delight our customers

• Influence Ciena Services and Support value through retention, higher product and services adoption, and increased customer satisfaction and overall customer health scores

• Expanded account revenue through documented cross-sell and up-sell recommendations

• Lead new business growth through greater technical advocacy and reference-ability

• Defined and established operational tracking metrics for team and customer

• Fostered trusted advisor status for a meaningful customer relationship across the entire customer lifecycle

Ideal Profile:

A highly energetic and relationship driven customer facing individual who is knowledgeable about the Ciena product portfolios, technology marketplace, dynamics, and trends and wants to make an impact on the future of communications. You're looking for a company where you have the opportunity to pursue your interests across multiple business functions and geographies. You bring to the organization the following competencies:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Sciences, Electrical Engineering, or Business Administration preferred or relevant years of work experience in a high-tech environment

• Min 3-5 years in the technology industry in a technical customer engagement role

• Possess a background in technical support or technical account management within the Optical Transport or Packet networking domains

• Results-driven, a bias for speed, action and a relentless passion for the customer experience

• A dynamic personality that is collaborative, empathetic, passionate, and customer focused Out of the box thinker that challenges the status quo

• Ability to influence through persuasion, negotiation, and consensus building

• Strong analytical skills and ability to think through complex business issues

• Demonstrated experience creating and delivering professional technical presentations in writing, through email, reports, or in face-to-face meetings to an audience of high technical skills, management and operational experience

• Willingness to travel +25% within the region/market for customer business reviews and serve in an after-hours on-call rotation for escalation activities

#LI-SM #LI-Remote #LI-Hybrid

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At Ciena, we are committed to building and fostering an environment in which our employees feel respected, valued, and heard.  Ciena values the diversity of its workforce and respects its employees as individuals. We do not tolerate any form of discrimination.

Ciena is an Equal Opportunity Employer, including disability and protected veteran status.

If contacted in relation to a job opportunity, please advise Ciena of any accommodation measures you may require.