Vice President, Manufacturing & Network Operations

As demand for cloud and AI networking infrastructure increases, Supply Chain plays a critical role in enabling Ciena’s resilience, global reach, and long-term growth. Reporting to the Chief Supply Chain Officer, the VP of Manufacturing & Network Operations translates growth strategy into scalable, resilient, and globally executable manufacturing capability. This role leads a complex contract manufacturing network to deliver quality, cost competitiveness, supply assurance, and profitable growth at scale.

How you will make an impact:

• Own manufacturing capacity readiness across the contract manufacturing network and align executable manufacturing plans with customer demand forecasts.

• Govern executive-level contract manufacturer relationships, including contracts, SLAs, KPIs, business reviews, cost reduction initiatives, and escalation management.

• Lead manufacturing engineering activities to establish scalable, yield-optimized processes for complex networking hardware.

• Drive manufacturing quality systems and continuous improvement initiatives to achieve yield, DPPM, field quality, and on-time delivery objectives.

• Partner with NPI and Procurement teams to enable design-to-build transitions, manufacturing launch readiness, component quality management, and supplier corrective actions.

• Define manufacturing capacity strategies, including line balancing, multi-site capacity planning, dual-sourcing, and production re-routing.

• Lead business continuity, disaster recovery, organizational capability development, and productivity initiatives across the global manufacturing network.

The must haves:

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Engineering (EE/ME/Industrial) or related field.

• Experience: 15+ years in manufacturing or operations leadership within technology hardware, including 5+ years managing outsourced contract manufacturing at scale in a multi-partner ecosystem.

• Application of manufacturing processes for complex networking, telecom, or datacenter hardware.

• Track record of driving quality, yield improvement, and cost reduction programs within an outsourced manufacturing model.

• Experience managing global manufacturing networks during trade or tariff volatility and supply disruption.

• Executive-level negotiation and relationship management with contract manufacturing partners.

Nice to haves:

• Experience: Experience in optical, photonic, and high-speed networking manufacturing.

• Certifications: Six Sigma Black Belt or equivalent certification.

• Experience: Experience building or overseeing global, in-region manufacturing as part of geographic diversification.

• Education: MBA.

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