UNIVERSAL TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS · JOB DESCRIPTION
Network Program Manager
Program leadership for an enterprise network engineering group — planning, governance, and delivery across a global portfolio
TITLE | Network Program Manager (Consultant) |
LOCATION | New York, NY — on-site 3–4 days per week |
ENGAGEMENT | UTS project team at a client site; long-term, multi-year program |
LEVEL | Senior — 10+ years; owns a portfolio of infrastructure programs end to end |
INDUSTRY | Global financial services (enterprise network engineering group) |
About UTS
Universal Technology Solutions (UTS) is a vendor-independent systems integrator and Cisco Preferred Partner headquartered in Hoboken, NJ, with operations across the US, UK, Canada, the Netherlands, India, Singapore, Japan, and Australia. We design, build, test, and operate network, data center, security, and AI infrastructure for some of the world's largest financial services firms. Our engineers and program managers work as UTS project teams on long-term programs at client sites, where depth, ownership, and clear communication matter.
About the Project
UTS is delivering a multi-year program of work for the enterprise network engineering group of a leading global financial services firm in New York. The group designs and deploys the firm's data and voice network infrastructure: privately owned data centers across the globe, campus and branch networks, the global WAN and metro core, public cloud connectivity, the internet edge, and low-latency trading-floor networks.
The program spans the group's recurring and project-based work: network code and hardware certification, risk- and CVE-driven patch programs, platform refreshes and new-site deployments, vendor evaluations and proofs of concept, and the automation initiatives that run across all of them. UTS is adding a Network Program Manager to lead the planning, governance, and delivery of this portfolio alongside the client's engineering leadership.
Role Summary
The Network Program Manager owns end-to-end delivery of a portfolio of interdependent network programs for the client's engineering group. The role translates engineering intent into structured plans, drives execution across lab, engineering, operations, security, and vendor teams in multiple regions, and gives senior stakeholders a clear, current picture of scope, schedule, risk, and spend.
This is a program management role, not an engineering role. The candidate does not need a deep networking background, but does need enough familiarity with network infrastructure projects to plan them realistically, ask the right questions of engineers, and recognize when a schedule or dependency is at risk. The emphasis is on disciplined planning, governance, stakeholder management, and executive-grade reporting across a portfolio of concurrent workstreams.
Key Responsibilities
Program planning and governance
• Build and maintain the integrated program plan across certification, deployment, refresh, and automation workstreams, including milestones, dependencies, critical path, and resource loading.
• Establish and run program governance: steering committees, workstream stand-ups, RAID logs, change control, and decision records.
• Define scope, success criteria, and acceptance for each project in the portfolio, and manage scope change through a disciplined process.
• Track budget, forecast, and actuals across the portfolio; manage purchase requests, vendor invoices, and capital versus operating allocations with client finance and procurement.
Delivery execution
• Drive the network code and hardware certification cadence: intake, prioritization, lab scheduling, test execution tracking, sign-off, and release to production.
• Run risk- and CVE-driven patch programs with urgency: coordinate expedited certification, maintenance-window scheduling, change approvals, and regional rollout across data center, campus, branch, and WAN estates.
• Manage platform refresh and new-site deployment projects from design approval through procurement, staging, installation, migration, cutover, and hypercare.
• Coordinate across the client's global engineering, operations, security, cabling, facilities, and application teams, and across time zones, to keep work sequenced and unblocked.
• Own the deployment calendar and change pipeline for the group; de-conflict with enterprise freeze periods, market events, and other infrastructure programs.
Vendor and partner management
• Manage network OEM and tooling vendors (for example Cisco, Arista, test-tool and appliance vendors) on roadmap, support cases, escalations, PoC logistics, and delivery commitments.
• Coordinate proofs of concept and product evaluations: capture evaluation criteria from engineering, schedule lab time, track results, and drive to a decision.
• Track hardware and software orders, lead times, licensing, and support renewals that gate program milestones.
Risk, quality, and reporting
• Identify, quantify, and escalate program risks and issues early; maintain mitigation plans and drive them to closure.
• Produce weekly and monthly status reporting, executive dashboards, and steering-committee materials for both technical leadership and non-technical senior management.
• Ensure engineering deliverables (design documents, certification reports, standards, runbooks) are completed, reviewed, and stored to the client's documentation standards.
• Capture lessons learned after each major release or cutover and feed improvements back into the certification and deployment process.
Required Experience
• 10+ years of IT program or project management in a large enterprise, including meaningful experience delivering network or infrastructure projects (for example data center, campbranch, WAN, or cloud connectivity programs).
• Demonstrated ownership of multi-workstream programs with budgets in the multi-million-dollar range, across multiple regions and vendors.
• Experience managing infrastructure projects in a change-controlled production environment, such as hardware refreshes, data center builds or migrations, or software release and patch programs.
• Experience in financial services or another highly regulated, low-tolerance-for-outage environment is strongly preferred.
• PMP, PgMP, or PRINCE2 certification, or equivalent demonstrated practice. Agile or SAFe experience is a plus.
• Familiarity with networking concepts and terminology is required; a formal network engineering background or certification is not.
Required Skills
Program management
• Integrated planning, critical-path management, dependency and resource management across parallel workstreams.
• Financial management: budgeting, forecasting, accruals, purchase and invoice tracking, capex/opex treatment.
• Risk and issue management, change control, and formal governance in a regulated environment.
• Proficiency with program tooling such as MS Project, Jira, ServiceNow (change and project modules), Confluence, and Excel/PowerPoint at an executive-reporting standard.
Domain familiarity
• General familiarity with enterprise network infrastructure — data center, campbranch, WAN, and cloud connectivity — at the level needed to plan projects and communicate with engineers; detailed design knowledge is not required.
• Familiarity with software release, patch, and vulnerability-remediation programs, maintenance-window planning, and ITIL change management.
• Familiarity with the logistics of infrastructure projects: procurement and lead times, equipment staging and installation, site readiness, and cutover planning.
Stakeholder and communication
• Excellent written and verbal communication; able to brief senior management, write crisp executive summaries, and facilitate decisions among competing priorities.
• Strong negotiation and influence skills across engineering, operations, security, finance, procurement, and vendors.
Preferred Skills
• Prior program experience with a trading or capital-markets technology organization.
• Experience working with network OEMs such as Cisco or Arista on orders, licensing, support, and end-of-life planning.
• Experience with security remediation programs or cloud connectivity programs (AWS, Azure).
• Experience building or improving a PMO function, templates, and reporting for an engineering organization.
Professional Attributes
• Deep sense of ownership and accountability; treats the program as their own and is proactive in surfacing problems and solutions.
• Calm and decisive under pressure, particularly during expedited security patch cycles and production cutovers.
• Strong analytical skills; interprets technical and financial data quickly and turns it into clear decisions.
• Organized, detail-oriented, and disciplined about follow-through across many parallel threads.
• Collaborative with engineers and able to earn their trust without being an engineer; direct and concise with executives.
Location and Work Arrangement
The project is based at the client's New York, NY location and requires on-site presence 3–4 days per week, with flexibility to support occasional off-hours change windows and calls with regional teams in EMEA and APAC. Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States. UTS conducts background checks for all client-facing personnel.
