Lead Technical Support Manager

### Key Responsibilities **Leadership & Team Development** - Lead and develop the CIC L2 Technical Support team (Wireless and Optical), fostering collaboration between the Rochester, Vancouver and Markham sites. - Coach, mentor, and grow technical specialists to enhance product knowledge, troubleshooting discipline, and professional communication. - Establish team goals aligned with regional and global service objectives, promoting ownership and accountability. - Conduct regular 1:1s, performance reviews, and knowledge-sharing sessions to sustain engagement and capability growth. **Operational & Technical Excellence** - Oversee day-to-day case operations, ensuring SLA adherence, consistent quality, and proactive issue resolution. - Drive best-in-class case management practices, leveraging Salesforce (SFDC), Phone System/Voice analytics, and dashboard metrics. - Coordinate escalations with L3/L4 Engineering and Product Line teams to ensure thorough root-cause analysis and corrective actions. - Champion continuous improvement in tools, processes, and documentation, including knowledge base content and training assets. - Guide lab replication and validation activities to accelerate resolution of complex field issues. **Cross-Functional Collaboration** - Serve as the primary interface between Technical Support, Product Line, and Engineering teams to surface field trends and systemic issues. - Collaborate with Product Management to influence new product introduction (NPI) readiness, technical documentation, and support enablement. - Partner with Quality and Commercial Operations to track and communicate customer experience metrics (CEI, CSAT, NPS). - Contribute to strategic initiatives improving case prioritization, workflow automation (GridBot, Salesforce integration), and regional standardization. **Customer Engagement & Escalations** - Act as a senior escalation point for key customer cases in both Wireless and Optical domains. - Review and present case summaries, performance metrics, and root-cause findings to internal and external stakeholders. - Ensure timely and transparent communication to customers during critical or high-impact incidents. - Promote a strong Voice-of-Customer (VOC) culture, driving systemic changes based on feedback from utilities, partners, and OEM clients. ### Required Qualifications - Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related technical discipline or equivalent work experience. - Minimum 5 years of experience in communications systems, networking, or substation automation, including technical support or field operations. - Proven leadership or supervisory experience within a technical or customer-facing support environment. - Strong understanding of wireless and optical communications technologies, including IP networking, LTE/5G, SONET/SDH, MPLS-TP, or Ethernet. - Experience managing distributed teams across multiple sites and remote resources or product lines. - Demonstrate ability to drive process improvement and deliver measurable performance outcomes. - Excellent interpersonal, communication, and organizational skills, with the ability to influence across functions and geographies. ### Desired Characteristics - Familiarity with GE Lentronics and GE MDS (or comparable industrial networking and communications systems). - Working knowledge of Salesforce CRM and customer analytics/reporting tools. - Certifications such as CCNA, CCNP, or PMP are an asset. - Strong analytical mindset with the ability to balance technical problem-solving and customer satisfaction. - Adaptable to changing priorities and comfortable leading through ambiguity. - Passion for coaching and building high-performing, customer-centric technical teams. ### Travel Requirement - Ability and willingness to travel up to 25% for customer meetings, training, and internal collaboration.