Senior Lead Project Controls Specialist

Lumen is the trusted network for the AI‑powered world, connecting people, data, and applications through our expansive fiber network and connected ecosystem. We enable secure, high‑performance connectivity across cloud, edge, and AI workloads for enterprises, governments, and communities.

At Lumen, you’ll work on infrastructure customers rely on today and build for what’s next, where performance, security, and resilience matter.

This is a high accountability environment where bold ideas drive real innovation for our customers, partners, and industry. The work is challenging, expectations are clear, and trust is built into how we operate. If you’re ready to take ownership, deliver meaningful impact, and help shape the future of AI‑ready connectivity, join us today.

The Senior Lead Project Controls Specialist will shape resource planning and operational expenditure governance across Custom Networks and CN Shared Resources. In this highly visible individual contributor role, you will develop data-driven planning models that connect customer and project demand with workforce supply, business priorities, and delivery capacity.

You will partner with project controls, program management, operations, engineering, finance, products resources, and business leaders to identify capacity gaps, contractor requirements, vacancies, resource modelling, and delivery risks. Your insights and recommendations will help leaders make informed decisions, strengthen planning accuracy, and align critical business commitments with available resources.

This is a work from home position within the U.S.

• Lead short-, medium-, and long-term resource planning across project teams and business functions.
• Build and maintain resource supply-and-demand models reflecting workloads, priorities, vacancies, contractor needs, skills, and capacity constraints.
• Develop scenario-planning frameworks, dashboards, and reporting views that provide visibility into resource demand, utilization, contractor mix, vacancies, and planning risks.
• Identify resource gaps, skill constraints, and capacity risks, and recommend practical options that support business and delivery commitments.
• Partner with leaders to align resource plans with project schedules, annual planning cycles, operational expenditure assumptions, and changing priorities.
• Facilitate cross-functional planning and governance sessions to validate assumptions, evaluate risks, review priorities, and establish mitigation actions.
• Translate complex data and modelling outputs into concise, action-oriented recommendations and decision materials for senior leaders.
• Improve planning standards, data quality, reporting cadence, governance routines, and forecast reliability.
• Develop and maintain deployment-driven revenue realization schedules month-over-month that translate field deployment milestones, and delivery sequencing into timing assumptions for business planning and forecasting to share with Leadership teams, Finance, Product.

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Business, Operations, Analytics, or a related field.
• Eight or more years of experience in project controls, resource planning, workforce planning, Opex management, portfolio governance, or related discipline.
• Demonstrated experience building resource models, capacity plans, workload forecasts, planning dashboards, and scenario analyses.
• Strong understanding of project delivery environments, governance routines, planning assumptions, and cross-functional dependencies.
• Advanced proficiency in Excel and Power BI, including the ability to build clear, scalable, and maintainable models and reporting views.
• Experience preparing executive-level updates, decision materials,…