Product Line Manager (PLM) – Mobile Core Service Assurance

Summary:

VIAVI (NASDAQ: VIAV) has a 100+ year history of technical innovations that have evolved to keep pace and address our customers’ most pressing business issues. We make equipment, software, and systems that help to plan, deploy, certify, monitor, and optimize all kinds of networks - like those for mobile phones, service providers, large businesses and data centers. VIAVI is also a leader in high performance thin film optical coatings and engineered diffusers, providing light management solutions to anti-counterfeiting, consumer electronics, automotive, defense and instrumentation markets.

We are the people behind the products that help keep the world connected – at home, school, work, at play, and everywhere in between. VIAVI employees are fierce about supporting customer success and we welcome people who bring their best every day to the company - to question, to collaborate and to push for solutions that will delight our customers.

VIAVI Solutions is seeking a strategic and highly technical Product Line Manager (PLM) to join its Automated Mobility Solutions (AMS) business unit, specifically owning the evolution of the NITRO Mobile product portfolio.

In this role, you will drive the product strategy, roadmap, and commercial success of our next-generation Mobile Core Service Assurance solutions. You will blend deep cellular network domain expertise (4G EPC, 5G NSA, and 5G Standalone Service-Based Architecture) with robust software product management practices. This position bridges engineering, data science, marketing, and sales to deliver cloud-native observability, automated root-cause analysis (RCA), and AI-driven insights (AIOps) to global Tier-1 Communication Service Providers (CSPs).

Duties & Responsibilities:

 

1. Portfolio Strategy & Lifecycle Management:

·     Own the end-to-end product lifecycle for assigned NITRO Mobile core service assurance modules, from inception and market requirements definitions (PRDs/MRDs) to development, launch, and eventual sunset.

·     Define the multi-year portfolio roadmap, balancing tactical customer commitments with long-term strategic evolution toward automated network operations and network slicing assurance.

·     Champion cloud-native observability paradigms, ensuring NITRO Mobile platforms gracefully handle high-throughput 5G user-plane (UPF) and control-plane telemetry.

2. Product Architecture & Technical Definition:

·     Translate complex 3GPP standards and service-based interfaces into actionable software requirements for data collection, probe ingestion, and analytics dashboards.

·     Drive integration with modern orchestration and data layers, ensuring alignment with industry automation benchmarks such as TM Forum Open APIs.

·     Collaborate with engineering and data science teams to specify and validate machine learning-driven anomaly detection, predictive health indicators, and automated service triage models.

3. Business & Market Success:

·     Manage product line profitability (P&L optimization), pricing strategies, and packaging frameworks as the portfolio shifts toward virtualized, cloud-native subscription and SaaS delivery models.

·     Conduct market analysis to evaluate the Total Addressable Market (TAM), competitive landscapes (including independent software vendors and network equipment providers), and emerging operator pain points.

·     Support high-value pre-sales activities, delivering technical portfolio briefings, leading proof-of-concept (PoC) scopes, and responding to complex RFI/RFP requirements for major global carriers.

Pre-Requisites / Skills / Experience Requirements:

 

Technical Knowledge & Skills:

·     Cellular Core Architecture: Mastery of 4G Evolved Packet Core (EPC) and 5G Standalone (5G SA) architectures, including comprehensive familiarity with network functions like AMF, SMF, UPF, NSSF, and NWDAF.

·     Protocols & Telemetry: Deep understanding of mobile core protocol stacks (HTTP/2, GTPv2, Diameter, SIP/IMS) and real-time capture infrastructure (DPI, virtual taps, eBPF telemetry).

·     Cloud & Modern Infrastructure: Working familiarity with cloud-native deployment patterns (Kubernetes, AWS/Azure telco clouds), containerized applications, and distributed high-scale data architectures (Kafka, ClickHouse).

·     Standards Compliance: Familiarity with 3GPP performance management/trace specifications and TM Forum automation/service management frameworks.

Business & Market Requirements:

·     Product Management Excellence: Minimum of 8 to 10 years of experience as a technical Product Manager, PLM, or Solution Architect in the telecom OSS/BSS, monitoring, or service assurance space.

·     Commercial Acumen: Demonstrated experience managing software product pricing, constructing software subscription models, and generating business cases for major technology shifts.

·     Stakeholder Influence: Proven capability to influence across boundaries, collaborating effectively with software developers, system architects, finance, product marketing, and executive leadership.

·     Communication Skills: Exceptional ability to synthesize highly complex, low-level technical infrastructure challenges into clear value propositions for executive-level (C-suite) operator decision-makers.

If you have what it takes to push boundaries and seize opportunities, apply to join our team today.

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