As the global leader in high-speed connectivity, Ciena is committed to a people-first approach. Our teams enjoy a culture focused on prioritizing a flexible work environment that empowers individual growth, well-being, and belonging. We’re a technology company that leads with our humanity—driving our business priorities alongside meaningful social, community, and societal impact.
How You Will Contribute:
Ciena’s Product Security organization is expanding our India-based security lab capability to support product validation, telemetry readiness, and Detection Engineering. We’re looking for a hands-on Lab Manager who will own the reliability and day-to-day operations of our lab environment, ensuring our products are testable, observable, and ready for security validation.
This role is ideal for someone with strong system administration and network administration experience, comfort working with syslog and telemetry pipelines, and a practical security mindset. You will help validate fixes for known vulnerabilities, automate repeatable lab/admin work, and play a key role in enabling Detection Engineering by making sure the right signals are captured and available for testing and integration.
Own the upkeep, stability, and availability of the Product Security lab environment (compute, storage, virtualization, and lab tooling).
Administer and troubleshoot systems, products, configurations, services, accounts, patching, backups, performance, and reliability.
Manage lab networking (VLANs, routing, firewall rules, DNS/DHCP, VPN/remote access, certificates, and NTP/time sync).
Build and maintain lab topologies that reflect customer-like deployments for accurate testing and validation.
Ensure secure access controls and baseline hardening are applied across lab systems and products.
Establish and maintain centralized logging for lab systems and products, including syslog collection, forwarding, and retention.
Troubleshoot missing or inconsistent telemetry and drive root-cause fixes so logs are complete and reliable.
Support the Detection Engineering program by enabling required signals, data quality, and test scenarios within the lab.
Assist in basic security testing exercises focused on validation of fixes for known vulnerabilities.
Reproduce issues in the lab, capture evidence, and document validation steps/results clearly for engineering and security teams.
Partner with Product Security, R&D, and PSIRT stakeholders to coordinate lab needs, schedules, and readiness for testing.
Maintain lab documentation including diagrams, inventories, runbooks, and operational procedures.
Nice to Haves:
5+ years in lab operations, systems administration, network administration, or similar hands-on infrastructure role.
Strong Linux administration skills and comfort troubleshooting complex system issues end-to-end.
Familiarity with syslog, logging pipelines, and/or SIEM tools
Proficiency in Python, JSON, and scripting for automation and data normalization.
Exposure to basic security testing tools and workflows (Nmap, Wireshark, Burp Suite, vulnerability scanners).
Experience with virtualization and containers (VMware/KVM, Docker, Kubernetes is a plus).
Strong documentation and communication skills, with the ability to coordinate across security and engineering teams.
Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, or related field.
Assets:
Prior experience building or maturing a testing lab in a networking or telecom product environment.
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At Ciena, we are committed to building and fostering an environment in which our employees feel respected, valued, and heard. Ciena values the diversity of its workforce and respects its employees as individuals. We do not tolerate any form of discrimination.
Ciena is an Equal Opportunity Employer, including disability and protected veteran status.
If contacted in relation to a job opportunity, please advise Ciena of any accommodation measures you may require.
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What We Do
Ciena (NYSE: CIEN) is a global leader in networking systems, services, and software. We build the world’s most adaptive networks to enable our customers to deliver richer, more connected experiences for all users. At our core, Ciena is a company rooted in people. We prioritize deep, collaborative relationships within our teams and alongside our customers, partners, and communities around the world.
For three-plus decades, we’ve brought our humanity to our relentless pursuit of innovation. We continue to lead the evolution of networking with a strong track record of industry firsts. As end-user expectations skyrocket, our customers and their networks must transform. Ciena powers this transformation by driving next-generation solutions built for maximum openness and agility—today and into the future.
Corporate/Brand Values:
• Customer First
• Integrity
• Velocity
• Innovation
• Outstanding People
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