NOC Shift Team Leader

The Shift Team Leader acts as the primary operational authority during the shift, ensuring timely decision-making, effective cross-functional coordination (NMC, TAC, Engineering and Service Management) and the consistent execution of standard operating procedures.

Key Duties and Responsibilities

• Lead, supervise and coordinate the NOC shift team to ensure efficient operations, adherence to SOPs, and achievement of SLAs and KPIs.
• Act as the operational lead and incident commander during the shift, ensuring a structured response, sound decision-making and effective coordination during major incidents.
• Deputise for the NOC Manager when required, providing leadership oversight and operational decision-making.
• Manage workload distribution, prioritisation and the real-time execution of shift activities in a fast-paced operational environment.
• Lead end-to-end incident management, including detection, escalation, troubleshooting and resolution, within agreed timelines.
• Serve as the primary escalation point for high-priority and major incidents, ensuring timely restoration and minimal service impact.
• Ensure accurate logging, timely updates and proper closure of all incidents and service requests in NetSuite, maintaining high standards of data integrity.
• Oversee proactive network monitoring and ensure timely responses to alarms, events and performance degradation.
• Manage supplier and vendor escalations to support effective incident resolution and service restoration.
• Drive root cause identification and support the preparation and validation of Reason for Outage (RFO) reports and service improvement actions.
• Act as the client-facing escalation point, ensuring clear, timely and professional communication during incidents.
• Collaborate with Service Managers and internal stakeholders to maintain high levels of customer satisfaction and service delivery.
• Lead shift handovers and validate daily, weekly, monthly and ad hoc operational reporting.
• Identify operational gaps, risks and inefficiencies, and drive or escalate corrective actions as appropriate.
• Contribute to continuous improvement through SOP enhancement, participation in RCAs and the application of operational best practice.
• Coordinate with TAC, NMC, Engineering and Field teams to resolve complex issues and support planned maintenance activities.
• Support field operations where required, including troubleshooting, testing and service validation.

Experience and Skills

• 5+ years’ relevant experience in a telecommunications or NOC environment.
• Proven experience of team leadership within a 24/7 operations environment.
• Strong knowledge of technology platforms across transport networks (SDH, DWDM and OTN) and data/IP networks (BGP, Ethernet and IP/MPLS).
• Hands-on experience with ticketing tools, such as NetSuite or equivalent platforms.
• Hands-on experience with monitoring systems, such as PRTG, NMS, Cacti and SolarWinds.
• Strong incident management and troubleshooting skills.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to work under pressure and make sound decisions during critical incidents.
• Strong analytical and reporting skills.
• Ability to operate effectively in a high-pressure, real-time operations environment.
• Strong leadership presence and sound decision-making capability.
• Customer-focused, with excellent relationship management skills.
• Detail-oriented, with a strong focus on operational excellence.

Attributes

• Client-focused, relationship builder.
• Integrity, honesty with high ethical standards.
• Boundless, passionate and flexible.
• Personal excellence, accuracy and attention to detail.
• Collaborative, achieve results through teamwork and partnerships.