Capacity Planning Engineer

Description

The Capacity Planning Engineer is responsible for the strategic planning, forecasting, monitoring, and optimization of Fiber Light’s transport, IP/MPLS, Ethernet, optical, and backbone network infrastructure. This role ensures sufficient network capacity is available to support customer growth while maximizing the utilization of existing assets, minimizing service delivery delays, and supporting the company’s long-term network expansion strategy.

As part of the Strategic Engineering team, the Capacity Planning Engineer develops and maintains the tools, dashboards, engineering standards, and forecasting models used to monitor network utilization, identify capacity constraints, and proactively initiate augmentation projects before customer demand or network performance is impacted.

This position serves as the subject matter expert for network capacity management across Fiber Light’s MPLS backbone, Layer 2 Ethernet services, optical transport infrastructure, DWDM spectrum utilization, fiber route availability, and infrastructure expansion planning. Success in this role enables predictable service delivery, informed capital planning, improved network efficiency, and scalable growth across the organization.

• Develop and maintain long-term capacity strategies for Fiber Light’s national and regional network infrastructure.
• Monitor utilization across IP/MPLS, Ethernet, optical transport, DWDM, and backbone network environments.
• Forecast network growth using historical utilization trends, customer demand, sales projections, and strategic business initiatives.
• Identify potential capacity constraints and recommend infrastructure augmentations before service delivery or network performance is impacted.
• Maintain short-term and long-term capacity forecasts ranging from 30 days to 36 months.

• Monitor and analyze utilization across all MPLS backbone links and core network infrastructure.
• Track Layer 2 Ethernet service consumption and available switching capacity.
• Develop and maintain capacity models that support customer growth while preserving network performance and reliability.
• Establish and manage over subscription policies for customer-facing services.
• Define utilization thresholds and engineering triggers requiring capacity review or augmentation.

• Monitor wavelength utilization across Fiber Light’s optical transport platforms.
• Maintain visibility into available optical spectrum across all transport routes.
• Track channel assignments, wavelength availability, amplifier loading, route diversity, and overall transport capacity.
• Identify risks related to spectrum exhaustion and recommend capacity upgrades, route optimization, or network redesigns.
• Develop standards and policies governing wavelength allocation and spectrum utilization.

• Design and develop dashboards that provide actionable visibility into network utilization and capacity trends.
• Create and maintain automated reporting for:

• Partner with Business Intelligence and IT teams to automate reporting, forecasting, and capacity analytics.
• Develop predictive tools and models that identify future network constraints before they affect customer orders or operational performance.

• Develop and maintain engineering standards, policies, and procedures related to:
• Capacity planning methodologies
• Oversubscription ratios
• Backbone utilization thresholds
• Optical spectrum management
• Capacity augmentation triggers
• Demand forecasting
• Equipment lifecycle planning
• Strategic customer capacity reservations
• Establish engineering review processes that support consistent capacity planning and decision-making.
• Maintain comprehensive documentation supporting capacity planning processes, forecasting models, and engineering methodologies.

• Identify and prioritize backbone expansion requirements and…