Senior Fibre Strategy & Planning Specialist

Xplore Inc. is Canada’s fibre, 5G and satellite broadband company for rural living. Xplore is committed to the relentless pursuit of an improved broadband experience for all Canadians. Xplore is building a world-class fibre optic and 5G wireless network to enable innovative broadband services for better every day rural living, for today and future generations.

The Senior Fibre Strategy & Planning Specialist is responsible for supporting and advancing the company's strategic vision for fibre growth and network expansion across Canada. As a senior member of the Fibre Planning team, this role provides strategic and technical leadership in network investment planning, business case development, expansion prioritization, and deployment strategy, helping shape long term growth objectives, identify new growth opportunities, and support executive investment and capital allocation decisions.

Working with a high degree of autonomy, the successful candidate translates strategy into optimized and constructable FTTP network plans while balancing customer demand, constructability, scalability, and financial objectives. The role serves as a senior technical resource within a collaborative planning team, influencing decisions through expertise, analysis, and strategic insight rather than direct people leadership. Over time, the individual is expected to become a recognized subject matter expert in fibre strategy, geospatial planning, and investment analysis, establishing planning standards, mentoring peers, and helping drive planning excellence across the organization.

The role is expected to proactively identify opportunities that improve network reach, customer growth, capital efficiency, and long term shareholder value through a combination of planning expertise, geospatial intelligence, data analytics, automation, and strategic thinking.

Key Responsibilities Include:

Fibre Network Strategy & Growth Planning

• Lead development of fibre expansion strategies and long term network roadmaps.
• Evaluate greenfield and brownfield expansion opportunities.
• Assess market opportunities and recommend investment priorities.
• Provide strategic recommendations to senior leadership.
• Continuously identify and evaluate new FTTH, MDU, SFU, partnership, acquisition, and broadband expansion opportunities.
• Develop and maintain a long term opportunity pipeline supporting company growth objectives.
• Assess competitor network activity, demographic trends, housing developments, municipal growth plans, and market intelligence to identify future investment opportunities.
• Translate complex market, financial, engineering, and operational data into strategic recommendations for senior leadership.

Strategic Opportunity Development

• Develop and maintain a national opportunity funnel for FTTH, MDU, SFU, commercial, partnership, and acquisition based fibre expansion opportunities.
• Monitor land development activity, municipal growth plans, broadband funding opportunities, and competitive deployments.
• Identify underserved markets and recommend expansion priorities based on financial, operational, and strategic considerations.
• Quantify revenue growth opportunities, cost reduction opportunities, and capital efficiency improvements resulting from proposed initiatives.
• Develop repeatable methodologies and analytical models that enable proactive identification of future growth opportunities.

Long Range Planning, Market Funnel & Business Case Ownership

• Develop long range fibre expansion plans, market funnels, and business case inputs across both GIA and partnership based opportunities.
• Ensure business case assumptions reflect full cost economics, regional constructability realities, competitive dynamics, and execution constraints.
• Own the identification, qualification, and prioritization of future fibre growth opportunities.
• Develop scenario based planning and investment models assessing alternative deployment strategies, capital requirements, penetration assumptions, and competitive impacts.
• Develop business cases that balance customer growth, constructability, risk, and long term return on investment.
• Provide executive ready planning and investment insights to support capital prioritization and decision making.

Analyze project economics including:

• Cost per subscriber, cost per home, penetration assumptions, revenue forecasts, capital efficiency metrics, return on investment, government funding impacts, competitive positioning impacts
• Present recommendations to senior leadership and executives.
• Create high level design fibre routes using Arrow by Altman Solon.

Fibre Network Planning & Design

• Ensure optical margin analysis and other validation activities confirm planning assumptions and design robustness.
• Maintain high level network design principles.
• Ensure consistency across network planning activities.
• Serve as the escalation point for complex planning decisions.
• Apply sound engineering judgement when assessing competitive infrastructure, constructability, and deployment strategies including aerial, buried drill, and buried plow construction methods.
• Determine appropriate network architectures including centralized and distributed split designs.
• Develop planning frameworks that optimize customer reach, network scalability, and capital efficiency.
• Perform scenario analysis evaluating centralized versus distributed network architectures and alternative deployment methodologies.
• Validate planning assumptions using engineering, market, financial, and operational data.

GIS Leadership & Geospatial Intelligence

• Lead strategic geospatial intelligence and spatial planning initiatives supporting fibre growth and investment decisions.
• Lead GIS analysis and spatial planning initiatives.
• Develop and maintain GIS workflows and scripts.
• Improve strategic planning processes using Arrow by Altman Solon.
• Support users with spatial analysis and data interpretation.
• Identify opportunities for automation and process improvement.
• Act as the organization's primary GIS planning resource for strategic and high level planning related requests.
• Develop advanced spatial models that identify addressability gaps, growth opportunities, competitor exposure, and network constraints.
• Integrate engineering, customer, financial, demographic, and competitive datasets into geospatial planning models.

Process Improvement, Analytics & Automation

• Design automation tools and analytical frameworks that improve decision making.
• Develop reporting, automation, and planning workflows.
• Improve data quality and planning efficiency.
• Build and maintain reusable data pipelines supporting fibre planning, forecasting, and investment analysis.
• Create dashboards, reporting solutions, and decision support tools for leadership teams.
• Leverage Databricks, Python, SQL, ArcGIS, and other analytics platforms to automate manual planning activities.
• Identify opportunities to improve planning efficiency, data quality, and organizational effectiveness through automation.

Mentorship & Knowledge Leadership

• Train planners, analysts, and GIS users.
• Mentor staff on planning methodologies and best practices.
• Foster technical excellence across the organization.
• Champion data driven planning methodologies and strategic thinking across the organization.
• Promote best practices in analytics, automation, GIS, and investment planning.

The ideal candidate will possess:

•  7 to 10+ years of experience in fibre OSP planning, wireline network design, or FTTH engineering, with demonstrated leadership accountability.

• Demonstrated experience developing executive level business cases.
• Experience supporting large capital investment decisions.
• Experience with government funded telecommunications projects.
• Experience leading complex planning initiatives.
• Demonstrated experience identifying and evaluating telecommunications growth opportunities.
• Experience leveraging GIS, analytics, automation, or data science technologies to solve business problems.
• Experience influencing investment decisions through business case development and strategic recommendations.
• Experience collaborating with engineering, finance, operations, and senior leadership teams.

Leadership Skills

• Proven ability to influence decisions.
• Strong presentation and communication skills.
• Ability to simplify complex technical concepts for executives.
• Strategic thinker with demonstrated ability to identify opportunities and drive business growth.
• High degree of ownership and accountability for business outcomes.
• Ability to influence executive decisions without direct authority.
• Strong analytical problem solving skills and ability to convert ambiguity into actionable plans.

Technical Skills

• Advanced fibre network planning, design & construction expertise.
• Advanced GIS proficiency and GIS automation.
• Advanced geospatial modelling and spatial analytics capabilities.
• Competencies using Arrow by Altman Solon.
• Strong financial and business analysis capabilities.
• Data analysis using Databricks and automation experience.
• Experience developing data pipelines, automation frameworks, and analytical solutions.
• Experience creating dashboards and executive decision support tools.
• Experienced in Python and SQL.
• Excellent understanding of outside plant network design & construction.
• Strong understanding of telecommunications market dynamics, competitive analysis, and opportunity assessment.
• Knowledge of broadband funding programs and requirements.
• Experience leveraging AI and advanced analytics techniques to support strategic planning and business decision making.

Education

• Engineering degree (Electrical, Civil, or related discipline), or
• Degree in GIS, Data Science, Computer Science, or a related analytical field, or
• Engineering Technologist Diploma or equivalent practical experience

Condition of Employment:

As a condition of employment and in order to comply with industry related data security standards, this position is subject to the successful completion of a Criminal Background Check. Details will be supplied to applicants as they move through the selection process.

Xplore is committed to creating an accessible environment and will accommodate disabilities during the selection process. Please let your recruiter know during the selection process of any accommodation needs.