Director, Network Architecture & Technology Strategy

Xplore Inc. is Canada’s fibre, 5G and satellite broadband company for rural living. Xplore is committed to the relentless pursuit of an improved broadband experience for all Canadians. Xplore is building a world-class fibre optic and 5G wireless network to enable innovative broadband services for better every day rural living, for today and future generations.

 

Position Overview 

The Director, Network Architecture & Technology Strategy is the senior technical authority responsible for defining Xplore’s long-term network evolution, multidomain architecture, and investment strategy across Fiber, Fixed Wireless, Transport, Core/IP, and Access networks. The role sets the architectural vision, establishes standards, and ensures all network domains evolve cohesively to support Xplore’s growth, performance, and cost objectives. The Director provides enterprise wide strategic influence across all value streams, ensuring architectural decisions align with customer experience, operational efficiency, and financial outcomes. The Director also ensures that network strategy and architecture are directly connected to business strategy, enterprise objectives, and measurable business outcomes/KPIs, reinforcing the network’s role as a driver of customer experience and organizational performance. 

The Director serves as a key advisor to the Executive Team on network evolution, technology lifecycle, and the architectural requirements that shape Xplore’s long-range capital plan. While the centralized Planning organization owns capital forecasting and investment planning, this role defines the architectural standards, technology choices, resiliency requirements, and long-term network evolution principles that the capital plan must follow.

Key Leadership Expectations 

All Xplore Directors and Senior Technical Leaders are expected to demonstrate  transformational leadership and operate as enterprise wide influencers. This 

includes: 

Cross-Functional Leadership & Collaboration 

• Building trusted relationships across all value streams. 
• Delivering business outcomes through influence, not just authority. 

Driving Transformation & Continuous Improvement 

• Challenging the status quo and leading modernization across people, process, and technology. 
• Championing simplification, standardization, and operational excellence. 

Strategic & Tactical Balance 

• Balancing immediate operational needs with long-term capability building. 
• Ensuring execution today while building the foundation for tomorrow. 

Business Impact & KPI Alignment 

• Connecting engineering and operational initiatives to measurable customer and business outcomes. 
• Ensuring every initiative has clear success metrics and operational impact. 

Customer-Centric Mindset 

• Understanding end-to-end customer journeys and service experiences. 
• Ensuring decisions reflect customer impact, service quality, and operational reliability. 

Automation & Efficiency 

• Driving automation of manual, repetitive tasks to reduce toil and increase speed. 
• 24×7 Operational Accountability 
• Supporting 24×7 operational readiness for infrastructure-related issues. 
• Ensuring teams are trained, organized, and equipped for rapid response.

  Key responsibilities include:

Network Architecture & Technology Strategy – Core Mandate 

• Own the end-to-end network architecture blueprint, including Core, Transport, Access, Edge, and supporting platforms. 
• Partner with DevOps, Product, Marketing, Sales, and other business stakeholders to understand business problems and evaluate technology and architecture solutions that best address those needs. 
• Lead a small, high-performing team of forward-looking architects, continuously assessing emerging technologies and identifying opportunities to improve performance, scalability, and unit economics. 
• Consult with Design and Engineering teams while leading major vendor evaluations, selections, and requirements definition for all technology and architecture decisions. 
• Orchestrate network architecture and integration requirements for acquisitions, coordinating closely with Sales, Marketing, Network Operations, Engineering, and Product to ensure seamless technical and commercial integration. 
• Serve as the primary interface for Product Management, driving innovation and determining the optimal technical approach to achieve target business and product outcomes. 
• Define and drive product and technology specifications based on desired customer experience, performance, and commercial objectives. 
• Operate within an agile, iterative operating model, ensuring architectural decisions support rapid delivery while maintaining long-term strategic integrity. 
• Lead Xplore’s Technology Strategy Center of Excellence, setting direction, establishing standards, and ensuring architectural consistency across all network domains. 
• Coach and inform other parts of the business on technology capabilities, limitations, and opportunities, ensuring alignment between business strategy and technical evolution. 
• Own the multidomain technology roadmap, ensuring alignment with business objectives, customer outcomes, and long-range investment priorities.

Architecture Governance, Business Alignment & Capital Planning Influence

• Connect network strategy and architectural decisions directly to business strategy, enterprise objectives, and expected business outcomes/KPIs. 
• Maintain continuously updated current-state, next-state, and target-state architectures, each tied to defined business outcomes and KPIs. 
• Ensure network objectives, priorities, and actions remain aligned with Xplore’s transformation toward the next-state and target-state architectures. 
• Drive customer experience improvement by embedding CX, reliability, and performance considerations into architectural decisions. 
• Define the architectural direction, technology standards, lifecycle priorities, and resiliency requirements that directly inform the multi-year capital plan.
• Ensure that all capital planning activities led by the Planning organization are aligned to approved architecture, technology strategy, and long-term network evolution principles.
• Provide authoritative architectural inputs — including technology selection, design patterns, capacity and resiliency requirements, and modernization priorities — that the Planning team must incorporate into capital forecasts and investment sequencing.
• Partner closely with the Planning leader to ensure the capital plan is technically sound, cost-efficient, and aligned with product expectations, without directly owning the capital planning function.

Major Architectural Domains 

• Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) 
• Transport (DWDM, optical layers) 
• Core Network (IP/MPLS, edge, peering) 
• 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) 

Reports directly to the SVP, Network, serving as the senior technical advisor on  network evolution, spectrum strategy, and long-range capital planning.

Value Stream Access & Strategic Influence 

• Full strategic influence across all Xplore value streams (Platform Engineering, Fiber, Fixed Wireless, Business Services, and supporting functions). 
• Ensures architectural decisions, standards, and roadmaps are consistently applied across all domains. 
• Operates as an enterprise wide integrator, aligning technology strategy with business priorities, customer outcomes, and operational capabilities.

KPIs & Success Measures 

Strategic & Architectural Outcomes 

• Delivery of a cohesive, multiyear network architecture roadmap aligned to business objectives. 
• Adoption of architectural standards across all value streams. 
• Successful execution of major architectural transitions (e.g., IP core evolution, DWDM upgrades, FWA modernization). 
• Demonstrated alignment between network strategy, architectural decisions, and enterprise business objectives. 
• Accuracy and currency of documented current, next, and target state architectures, with clear linkage to business outcomes and KPIs. 
• Measurable improvements in customer experience attributable to architectural decisions, standards, and roadmap execution. 

Financial & Investment Performance 

• Quality and accuracy of architectural inputs into long-range capital planning, ensuring the Planning organization can build an investment plan aligned to technology strategy, resiliency standards, and product requirements. 
• Demonstrated improvements in unit economics driven by architectural decisions. 
• Reduction in technology lifecycle risk and technical debt. 

Cross-Functional Leadership 

• Positive feedback from Product, Sales, Marketing, Engineering, and Operations on architectural partnership. 
• Effective orchestration of architecture requirements during acquisitions and major programs. 
• Demonstrated influence across all value streams. 

Innovation & Technology Evolution 

• Introduction and evaluation of emerging technologies that improve performance, cost, or customer experience. 
• Successful vendor evaluations, selections, and contract alignment with architectural strategy. 
• Delivery of technology strategy through the Center of Excellence. 
• Architectural innovations that materially improve customer experience, reliability, or performance.

The ideal candidate will possess:

Required Qualifications

• 15+ years in network architecture, network engineering, or technology strategy roles. 
• Deep expertise across multiple network domains (Core/IP, Transport/DWDM, Access, FWA, FTTH). 
• Proven experience leading architectural teams and influencing cross-functional stakeholders. 
• Strong background in vendor evaluation, technology selection, and standards development. 
• Demonstrated ability to translate business needs into technical strategy and architecture. 
• Experience working in agile or iterative delivery models. 
• Exceptional communication and executive-level presentation skills. 

Education 

• Bachelor’s degree required in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field. 
• Master’s degree considered an asset, but not required. 
• Relevant industry certifications (e.g., CCNP/CCIE, DWDM/optical certifications, cloud or DevOps certifications, PMP, ITIL) are beneficial. 

Condition of Employment:

As a condition of employment and in order to comply with industry related data security standards, this position is subject to the successful completion of a Criminal Background Check. Details will be supplied to applicants as they move through the selection process. 

Xplore is committed to creating an accessible environment and will accommodate disabilities during the selection process. Please let your recruiter know during the selection process of any accommodation needs.