Senior Strategic Analyst – Network Strategy & Investment

PositionTitle: Senior Strategic Analyst – Network Strategy & Investment

Base Salary: $110,400to $162,000 annually DOE

Benefits: Medical, dental, vision, 401k, flexible spending account, paid sick leave andpaid time off, parental leave, quarterly performance bonus, training, careergrowth and education reimbursement programs.

ZiplyFiber is a local internet service provider dedicated to elevating theconnected lives of the communities we serve. We offer the fastest homeinternet in the nation, a refreshingly great customerexperience, and affordable plans that put customers incharge. 

Asour state-of-the-art fiber network expands, so does our need for teammembers who can help us grow and realize our goals.  

Our CompanyValues: 

• Genuinely Caring: We treat customers and colleagues like neighbors, with empathy and full attention. 
  

• Empowering You: We help customers choose what is best for them, and we support employees in implementing new ideas and solutions. 
  

• Innovation and Improvement: We constantly seek ways to improve how we serve customers and each other.  
  

• Earning Your Trust: We build trust through clear, honest, human communication. 
  

Job Summary

The Senior Strategic Analyst– Network Strategy & Investment helps drive Ziply Fiber's most criticalnetwork investment decisions, independently structuring business problems,building financial and analytical models, and synthesizing large datasets intoclear, actionable recommendations for senior leadership.

The role spans networkexpansion, capital allocation, deployment economics, competitive intelligence,value engineering, and long-range network planning. The ideal candidatecombines strong financial and strategic problem-solving skills with thetechnical aptitude to work directly with large-scale network and geospatialdata.

This is a high-ownership rolefor someone who can take a strategic question from initial hypothesis throughanalysis to executive recommendation with limited direction, drawing on strongprior business judgment, and analytical rigor to proactively drive businessimprovement.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities: 

The Essential Duties and Responsibilities listed below are a range ofduties performed by the employee and not intended to reflect all dutiesperformed.

Network Strategy & Investment Analysis

·        Independently structure and evaluate strategicquestions related to network investment, expansion, capital allocation, anddeployment strategy.

·        Build financial models evaluating NPV, IRR,payback, capital efficiency, cost per passing, and other investment-returnmetrics.

·        Develop scenario and sensitivity analyses toevaluate alternative deployment strategies, construction methods, timingassumptions, costs, demand, and risk.

·        Develop business cases and investmentrecommendations for new markets, network expansions, and changes to existingdeployment plans.

·        Evaluate trade-offs between capitalrequirements, deployment timing, operational considerations, competitivedynamics, and long-term financial returns.

·        Translate complex analytical findings into clearrecommendations and decision frameworks for senior leadership.

·        Support annual and long-range capital planningand identifying opportunities to improve returns across the network investmentportfolio

Network Expansion & Capital Planning

·        Identify, prioritize, and evaluate network expansion opportunities usingfinancial, demand, competitive, operational, and geospatial data.

·        Develop analytical frameworks to rank markets and build areas based oninvestment return, strategic value, deployment feasibility, capital efficiency,and risk.

·        Evaluate changes to build plans and quantify their impact on capitalrequirements, timing, passings, and expected financial returns.

·        Analyze deployment economics across markets, construction methods,vendors, and network configurations.

·        Track approved investments against original assumptions and identifydrivers of cost, schedule, or return variance.

·        Identify opportunities to improve build sequencing and capitaldeployment based on changing market conditions and new information.

Value Engineering & Capital Efficiency

·        Analyze engineering, construction, labor, material, and vendor costdrivers to identify opportunities to improve capital efficiency.

·        Develop and maintain cost benchmarks and unit-economic frameworks acrossmarkets and deployment types.

·        Evaluate alternative engineering and construction approaches andquantify their impact on cost, schedule, risk, and financial returns.

·        Partner with Engineering, Construction, Procurement, Operations, andFinance to develop business cases for cost-reduction initiatives.

·        Establish analytical frameworks to prioritize opportunities and trackrealized savings against expected benefits.

·        Perform root-cause analyses of cost and schedule variances and recommendcorrective actions.

Competitive & Market Intelligence

·        Develop analytical views of competitor network presence, expansionactivity, market overlap, and potential implications for Ziply's investmentstrategy.

·        Combine internal and external datasets to identify emerging competitivethreats and investment opportunities.

·        Assess competitive intensity at the market, neighborhood, and addresslevel where appropriate.

·        Translate competitive intelligence into recommendations for marketprioritization, build sequencing, and capital allocation.

·        Develop repeatable frameworks for incorporating competitive activityinto network investment decisions.

Other Duties

·        Performsother duties as required to support the business and evolving organization.

What Success Looks Like

·        Giveleadership clear, fact-based visibility into where Ziply should invest, why,expected financial returns, key risks, and available alternatives.

·        Independentlystructure analyses, determine required data, develop models, challengeassumptions, and recommend a course of action.

·        Buildrepeatable analytical frameworks that improve the quality and speed of networkinvestment decisions.

·        Developa deep understanding of Ziply's network economics and connect financialoutcomes with engineering and operational decisions.

·        Proactivelyidentify opportunities and risks and initiate the analysis required to addressthem.

·        Becomea trusted partner to business leaders by combining analytical rigor withpractical business judgment.

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Required Qualifications:

·        Bachelor's degree in Finance, Economics, Business, Engineering, DataScience, Computer Science, Geography/GIS, or another quantitative or analyticalfield.

·        3 - 7 years of experience in corporate strategy, strategic finance,investment analysis, management consulting, telecommunications, infrastructure,or another capital-intensive industry.

·        Demonstrated experience independently structuring complex analyticalproblems and developing recommendations from incomplete or imperfectinformation.

·        Strong financial modeling skills, including experience with investmentcases, NPV/IRR analysis, scenario modeling, sensitivity analysis, and/orcapital planning.

·        Advanced Microsoft Excel skills and demonstrated ability to buildcomplex analytical models from the ground up.

·        Experience working with large datasets and combining multiple datasources to answer complex business questions.

·        Ability to translate analytical findings into concise recommendationsfor senior leadership and non-technical stakeholders.

·        Strong written and verbal communication skills, including experiencecreating executive-level presentations.

·        Demonstrated ability to identify the next analytical question withoutbeing explicitly directed.

·        Strong business judgment and ability to balance analytical rigor withreal-world operational constraints.

·        Ability to independently manage multiple workstreams in a fast-movingenvironment.

Preferred Qualifications:

·        Experience in telecommunications, broadband, infrastructure, utilities,transportation, energy, real estate development, or another capital-intensiveindustry.

·        Experience supporting network expansion, infrastructure investment,market prioritization, capital planning, or value engineering.

·        Strong SQL proficiency, including the ability to query and integratedata across multiple sources.

·        Experience with Python and analytical libraries such as pandas,geopandas, or comparable tools.

·        Experience with GIS platforms such as QGIS, ArcGIS, or equivalentspatial-analysis tools.

·        Experience developing financial models incorporating geospatial oraddress-level data.

·        Experience evaluating construction or infrastructure economics,including cost per passing, cost per mile, cost per foot, productivity, vendoreconomics, or similar unit-cost measures.

·        Experience developing executive-level business cases, investmentrecommendations, or strategic presentations.

·        Experience building dashboards, automated analytical workflows, orrepeatable decision-support tools.

·        MBA, master's degree, or other relevant advanced degree is a plus butnot required.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

·        Exceptionalanalytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to break problems intostructured analyses.

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