Senior Network Reliability Engineer, Incident Management

Job description

The world still has coverage blind spots. You could help eliminate them at Skylo.   Skylo has pioneered a standards-based approach to satellite connectivity. We connect smartphones and IoT devices directly to satellites. No special hardware, no entirely new networks. Just billions of existing devices, suddenly reachable anywhere on Earth. We're not building toward this future. We're already in it.   Our direct-to-device service is live on millions of activated devices across five continents, covering more than 72 million square kilometers, in partnership with leading satellite operators, mobile network operators, Tier-1 chipset makers, and OEMs worldwide. And we're just getting started.   At the heart of it all is Skylo's commercial NTN vRAN: a 3GPP standards-based, cloud-native platform that seamlessly bridges terrestrial and satellite networks. It's the infrastructure that makes true anywhere, anytime connectivity possible.   When you join Skylo, you'll work at the intersection of three markets reshaping how the world stays connected: mass-market consumer devices, automotive, and industrial IoT. Enabling people outdoors and critical workflows in the world's most remote places.   This is a rare chance to work on technology that matters, at a company that's already proving it works Summary: How You Will Impact Skylo As a Network Reliability Engineer (NRE) for Incident Management in the Global Product Support & Customer Success organization, you are the operational nerve center of Skylo’s 24×7 incident response function. You own the bridge — from first alert to full-service restoration. On a network where every subscriber is roaming over satellite, structured incident coordination directly determines whether millions of devices stay connected. You operate across all three Skylo hubs (Mountain View, Espoo, Bengaluru) and across every network domain — RAN, 5G Core, Cloud Infrastructure, and OSS — ensuring incidents are triaged, escalated, and resolved with speed and discipline.   At Senior NRE level you independently command bridge calls for Sev 1–4 incidents, support subject matter experts as incident coordinator and function as the communication lead during Sev 1 events, drive the execution of runbooks without supervision, manage the full incident lifecycle end-to-end in the ticketing system, and continuously improve the procedures you operate against. You are not a ticket router — you are the structured coordinator who ensures every incident has a clear owner, a live timeline, and a documented resolution path. Assuring Skylo’s network availability commitments to MNO partners and meeting SLA obligations is your primary measure of success. Key Responsibilities   Incident Command & Bridge Coordination - Serve as the central command point during all network degradations, service disruptions, and subscriber-impacting events — open the bridge, initiate the incident management process, and maintain command from first alert through full-service restoration. - Own end-to-end incident lifecycle management for Sev 1–4: initiate bridge calls, identify the cause and impacted domain, page the correct on-call NRE, maintain bridge discipline with clear ownership and timelines, and drive to restoration. - Prioritize incidents according to urgency and business impact — classify severity accurately using alarm signatures, subscriber impact data, and domain KPI telemetry from available OSS systems. - Escalate to subject matter experts in Operations and Engineering teams when critical or time-sensitive resolution is required — provide full technical context, a structured problem statement, and a documented timeline so the escalation recipient can act immediately. - Engage and interface with vendor support teams (RAN vendor, Core vendor, cloud infrastructure) when incident resolution requires external escalation; track vendor SLA response and escalate vendor delays to the domain NRE. - Support hypercare operations during major network launches, high-risk change windows, and special events — maintain readiness, monitor enhanced alert thresholds, and be the first responder for any degradation during the hypercare window. Incident Documentation & Lifecycle Management - Ensure all trouble tickets are created promptly in the incident management system (Jira/ServiceNow) with complete technical details, troubleshooting steps, MOPs followed, and outcome documentation — never close an incident with an incomplete ticket. - Produce a structured incident timeline artifact within two hours of closure: sequence of events, alarms triggered, actions taken, bridge participants, and all open action items with assigned owners and due dates. - Manage the open incident backlog at optimum levels — track ageing tickets, escalate stalled items, and ensure no incident closes without a documented resolution path or a justified deferral. - Coordinate post-incident review (PIR) scheduling: compile the incident record, gather logs from in-house observability tools and other relevant sources, and deliver a structured problem statement to the domain NREs owning the root cause analysis. - Handle internal, external, and MNO partner incident escalations and follow-ups — interface with Market Operations, OEM contacts, and partner NOCs for joint incident resolution; ensure external-facing communications are approved before transmission. Network Availability & SLA Assurance - Assure that Skylo’s operated network meets agreed availability KPIs and MNO partner SLA commitments — proactively track availability metrics and flag degradation trends before they breach SLA thresholds. - Track top recurring issues and feed continuous improvement inputs: document repeat-incident patterns, identify the operational gap (missing runbook, stale threshold, absent alert), and route findings to the appropriate domain NRE for action. - Contribute to the weekly and monthly Network Performance Report: incident count by severity and domain, MTTR trends, top issues, SLA compliance summary, and KPI deviation analysis. - Drive proactive measures for network issue detection and isolation — actively participate in the Service Assurance and Automation domain, providing operational input for closed-loop automation requirements. On-Call & Shift Operations - Participate in the global follow-the-sun on-call rotation as the incident coordination tier: Espoo shift bridges the US overnight window; Mountain View and Bengaluru shifts cover their respective regions — maintain 24×7 continuous coverage. - Maintain shift handoff hygiene: produce a written end-of-shift summary covering open incidents, degraded components, active change windows, vendor escalations in flight, and priority items for the incoming shift. - Manage the on-call paging workflow: acknowledge alerts within SLA target windows, escalate to L2 within defined thresholds, and ensure no alert goes unacknowledged across the shift boundary. - Support planned maintenance and change windows: validate pre-change observability coverage, confirm rollback readiness with the NI team, and execute rollback runbooks if a deployment causes service degradation. Cross-Functional Collaboration - Work in close collaboration across multiple Skylo functions during incidents: RAN NRE, Core NRE, Cloud Infrastructure NRE, BOSS (BSS & OSS), Network Implementation, Product Engineering and Market teams — coordinate without creating confusion by maintaining a single source of truth on the bridge. - Engage appropriate stakeholders based on incident signature, subscriber impact, and domain ownership — avoid over-escalation and under-escalation with disciplined severity classification. - Interface with MNO partner NOC teams during shared-impact events: relay technical status updates, manage the partner communication cadence, and escalate partner requests through the correct internal channel. - Surface repetitive manual incident steps to the service assurance automation team — document the step, frequency, and toil cost as structured input to the automation backlog. Technical Domain Knowledge - Maintain working knowledge of RAN architecture relevant to incident triage: CUSM (Control plane, User plane, Synchronization plane, Management plane), eCPRI/CPRI interfaces, PTP and SyncE timing, Netconf, and NTN-specific RAN alarm patterns. - Understand 5G Core network function roles (AMF, SMF, UPF, NRF, PCF, SEPP) at a level sufficient to classify an alarm, identify subscriber impact, and escalate with technical context. - Operate virtualized NTN infrastructure observability tools: navigate Grafana dashboards, ability to learn and use custom in-house tooling capabilities, run kubectl commands to assess pod health, and correlate OSS alarms with underlying infrastructure events. - Build domain depth progressively across the first 12 months — the Senior NRE role is a structured development track toward Staff NRE and Principal NRE, where independent incident command and domain ownership are the primary accountabilities. Qualifications Required - 5–10+ years of experience in telecom/wireless operations, network operations, or NRE in a production 24×7 environment. - Demonstrated ability to independently manage incident bridge calls: open the war room, maintain bridge discipline, drive to resolution, and produce a structured incident record. - Strong understanding of telecom network environments and 5G functional components — sufficient knowledge of RAN (CUSM, eCPRI, PTP/SyncE), 5G Core (AMF, SMF, UPF), and Cloud/OSS to triage intelligently and escalate with context. - Incident and outage management expertise: ability to prioritize by urgency and impact, manage multiple simultaneous events, and operate effectively under high-pressure 24×7 conditions. - Hands-on experience with at least one observability platform: Grafana dashboards, Prometheus alerting, Loki log queries, or equivalent — able to independently navigate to relevant signals during an active incident. - Kubernetes operational literacy: able to run kubectl get pods, describe a failing pod, read container logs, and identify health issues at the level needed to triage and escalate a platform-layer incident. - Structured written communication: capable of producing clear incident timelines, executive stakeholder updates, and post-incident summaries under time pressure. - Ticketing system proficiency (Jira, ServiceNow, or equivalent): incident lifecycle management, escalation workflows, and backlog hygiene. - On-call tooling experience (PagerDuty or equivalent): alert acknowledgement, escalation policy management, and on-call scheduling. - Ability to span departments and build strong working relationships with RAN, Core, Cloud, Engineering, and external partner teams to drive joint incident resolution. Preferred - Prior experience in a satellite, NTN, or space-to-ground connectivity operational environment. - Experience with OSS/BSS platforms: FCAPS alarm management, event correlation, SNMP trap handling, or EMS integration. - Familiarity with 3GPP NAS/NG-AP signaling flows, RRC state machine, or IMSI lifecycle procedures. - ITIL Foundation certification or demonstrated practical application of ITIL incident, problem, and change management processes. - Scripting ability in Python or Bash — sufficient to automate repetitive operational tasks, parse log output, or build quick diagnostic utilities. - Experience supporting hypercare operations, major network launches, or high-risk change windows. - Exposure to closed-loop automation frameworks or service assurance platforms used in network operations. What We Offer   With employees working across three continents, Skylo is proud to be an equal opportunity employer dedicated to building an inclusive and diverse workforce. Our worldwide and inclusive culture encourages a flexible approach to work, and we also offer an attractive range of benefits such as: - Competitive compensation packages including a stock option based equity program - Comprehensive benefits plans - Monthly allowances for wellness and education reimbursement - A generous time off policy, holidays, and the opportunity to temporarily work abroad - Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be part of developing and running the world’s first commercial, live direct-to-device satellite network and service - Access to a world-class team and talent across tech domains: software, hardware, chipsets, telecom, satellite and network virtualization - Open, transparent, inclusive culture that blends Silicon Valley, Nordic and South Asia characteristics   EEO Statement Skylo is an equal-opportunity employer and we celebrate diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, parent or caregiver status, political affiliation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws. We are also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. Please let us know if you need assistance or accommodation due to a disability.