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.
This Melbourne-based Sales Engineer role contributes to Ciena’s ANZ Sales Engineering team by shaping deployable fixed-transport solutions for a strategic telecommunications service-provider account. The role combines optical networking, solution design and customer engagement across Ciena’s hardware, software and network-control portfolio. Regular engagement with customer and internal teams is required, with some domestic and international travel and occasional collaboration outside standard local business hours.
How you will make an impact:
- Lead the technical development of assigned sales opportunities, including solution strategy, architecture, compliance, assumptions, risks, dependencies and technical positioning.
- Engage customer engineering, operational and commercial stakeholders to understand requirements, develop practical solutions and address technical queries.
- Provide technical guidance for tenders, contract clarifications and assigned fixed-transport opportunities, balancing customer outcomes, solution integrity and commercial viability.
- Prepare technical responses for RFPs and RFQs, including compliance statements, pricing-schedule inputs, engineering clarifications and customer proposals.
- Develop high-level network architectures and solution designs, and review or validate detailed engineering outputs such as equipment layouts, rack layouts, test plans and Methods of Procedure with delivery and post-sales teams.
- Deliver technical presentations, demonstrations, solution evaluations, trials and technology workshops for customer and internal stakeholders.
- Collaborate with Sales, regional product teams, Product Line Management, optical link-engineering teams, Research and Development, delivery and support teams to address customer requirements, progress opportunities and capture reusable solution content and best practices.
The must haves:
- Education: Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Telecommunications, Applied Science or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
- Experience: 5+ years of relevant telecommunications experience, including application of DWDM or Layer 0 optical transport systems, optical engineering technologies or test methodologies.
- Experience designing or applying fixed-transport network solutions in customer or project environments.
- Application of optical link engineering, including link budgets, attenuation, chromatic dispersion, fibre characteristics and other transmission impairments.
- Working knowledge of converged packet-optical technologies, including OTN, Carrier Ethernet and IP.
- Knowledge of coherent optical transmission technologies, including 100G and 400G, with awareness of emerging 800G applications.
- Utilization of optical design, planning or link-engineering tools.
Nice to haves:
- Experience supporting a Tier 1 telecommunications carrier or other large service provider.
- Experience with multi-vendor optical transport environments.
- Exposure to brownfield network modernisation, migration or transformation programmes.
- Background in network automation, APIs, telemetry or software-defined networking.
- Understanding of data-centre interconnect, cloud connectivity and AI-driven network-capacity requirements.
- Experience supporting customer trials, proofs of concept or formal solution evaluations.
- Background in technical and contractual compliance processes for large telecommunications procurements.
#LI-SG1
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.
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Telecommunications, Applied Science, a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience
- 5+ years of relevant telecommunications experience
- Experience applying DWDM or Layer 0 optical transport systems, optical engineering technologies, or test methodologies
- Experience designing or applying fixed-transport network solutions in customer or project environments
- Experience with optical link engineering, including link budgets, attenuation, chromatic dispersion, fibre characteristics, and transmission impairments
- Working knowledge of OTN, Carrier Ethernet, and IP
- Knowledge of coherent optical transmission technologies, including 100G and 400G, with awareness of 800G applications
- Experience using optical design, planning, or link-engineering tools
- Experience supporting a Tier 1 telecommunications carrier or other large service provider
- Experience with multi-vendor optical transport environments
- Exposure to brownfield network modernization, migration, or transformation programs
- Background in network automation, APIs, telemetry, or software-defined networking
- Understanding of data-center interconnect, cloud connectivity, and AI-driven network-capacity requirements
- Experience supporting customer trials, proofs of concept, or formal solution evaluations
- Background in technical and contractual compliance processes for large telecommunications procurements
Ciena Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Ciena and has not been reviewed or approved by Ciena.
-
Fair & Transparent Compensation — Pay is often characterized as competitive or above-market in certain roles and regions, with references to market-aligned salary ranges and transparency around pay bands.
-
Healthcare Strength — Health coverage is frequently framed as comprehensive, including medical, dental, and vision, with indications that coverage can extend to dependents and is viewed as a meaningful component of total rewards.
-
Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time-off offerings are described as flexible and generous, including Flex/uncapped PTO in many cases and additional paid time for volunteering.
Ciena Insights
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 We're the perfect size for you to make an impact. W Only Ciena has the depth of expertise and the culture of collaboration and partnership required to help our partners evolve. We do this by strategically integrating hardware, services, and software in an open environment to ensure our clients’ networks are ‘fit for flexibility’ today and into the f
Why Work With Us
We are known for our industry-firsts, including the first coherent optical solution, converged packet-optical platform, and intelligence automation platform. Our commitment extends beyond innovation, logging in over 35,000 volunteer hours and $2 million to worthy causes in 2023. We're the perfect size and culture for you to make a difference.
Gallery
