Customer Technical Advocate

Ciena is committed to our people-first philosophy. Our teams enjoy a culture focused on prioritizing a personalized and flexible work environment that empowers an individual’s passions, growth, wellbeing and belonging. We’re a technology company that leads with our humanity—driving our business priorities alongside meaningful social, community, and societal impact.


Customer Technical Advocate

As a Specialist, 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 Customer Technical Advocate within Global Customer Advocacy works in concert with the Customer Service Operations, 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 Customer 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:

- Closely collaborate with Sales and Customer Service Operations to facilitate a positive and welcoming onboarding experience for our customers making sure expectations are documented, aligned with the Services and Support deliverables, mutually agreed upon, and 100% achievable.
- Partner with franchise members on customer business reviews, difficult customer situations, improvement initiatives, and support-related contract activities.
- Trusted technical advisor to develop rock solid customer relationships across the customer’s business to include Engineering, Operations, and Implementation.
- Proactively monitor and prioritize technical support case work to ensure all service level objectives and agreements are met for the franchise.
- Coordinate and facilitate customer business meetings to answer technical questions or concerns related to product support issues on Ciena hardware and software platforms.
- Assume the role of escalation manager for highly escalated Services and Support related issues. Provide timely communication updates, resolution strategies and action plan deliverables.
- 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.
- Work with our Services and Support delivery teams closely monitoring Customer Success Indicators, ensuring post sales technical issues are proactively identified and addressed.
- Represent Global Technical Support during customer operational and business reviews and proactively suggests solutions to customer concerns.
- 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.
- Proactively analyze customer's network and provide a network health scorecard for hardware and software.
- Proactively seek out and recommend Ciena Services opportunities within customer accounts by leveraging deep customer relationships and intimate knowledge of our customers’ existing networks and future business needs. Provide product and service enhancement suggestions to Design and SPLM.

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 6-8 years in the technology industry in a technical customer engagement role
- Experience with Ciena products (e.g. 6500, 8700, MCP, etc.) while serving in a Technical Support, Technical Account Management, Network En