Director, Network Planning & Architecture

About the role

As Director of Network Planning, you will lead the strategy, planning, and evolution of Digital Realty’s global network infrastructure. You will partner with Technical Program Managers, Network Engineers, Design and Infrastructure Engineers, Field Engineers within DLR, and construction and telecommunications vendors and contractors to define scalable network strategies, strengthen architecture standards, and drive successful business outcomes across the organization.

You will help shape long-term network strategy and deliver faster, more effective outcomes for the business and our customers by combining sound network architecture, capacity planning, automation, and repeatable delivery models. Your goal will be to ensure Digital Realty’s network is reliable, scalable, cost-effective, and positioned to support future growth worldwide.

Digital Realty’s network supports customers and partners across a global platform of data centers and interconnection points. Our metro environments sit at the edge of the network, where customers connect directly to critical infrastructure, cloud platforms, and ecosystems. The Network Team is responsible for planning and operating this network reliably and at scale through strong architecture, standardized design patterns, and increasing levels of automation. The team manages the full lifecycle of space, power, and network assets across Digital Realty’s global data centers and metro points of presence, from long-range planning and capacity strategy to architecture, design, deployment, activation, commissioning, and continuous improvement through tooling and automation.

Responsibilities

• Lead Digital Realty’s global network planning strategy, including long-range capacity planning, infrastructure prioritization, and investment alignment to support business growth, customer demand, and service objectives.
• Lead network capacity deployment planning to ensure infrastructure is delivered in the right markets, at the right time, and at the right scale to support customer demand, product requirements, and business growth.
• Drive new market planning and infrastructure readiness by partnering across product, sales, finance, and deployment teams to evaluate demand signals, define requirements, and prioritize expansion opportunities.
• Partner closely with product teams to align network planning, architecture, and deployment priorities with product roadmaps, service requirements, and customer experience goals.
• Establish and govern network architecture standards, design principles, and planning frameworks that enable scalable, resilient, and cost-effective infrastructure across global metro and data center environments.
• Drive repeatable planning and deployment models by translating architecture strategy into scalable designs, implementation patterns, and technical requirements for global network expansion.
• Own the roadmap for planning automation, data-driven workflows, and process standardization to reduce manual effort, improve quality, and increase speed and consistency across the organization.
• Drive the strategic use of AI tools to automate planning, analysis, and design workflows, improve decision quality, identify optimization opportunities, and scale engineering productivity through more intelligent and repeatable operating models.
• Partner across engineering, operations, infrastructure, and business teams to align network strategy with service requirements, financial targets, operational readiness, and customer commitments.
• Build and evolve governance, business processes, and performance measures for network planning and design, including topology standards, hardware lifecycle strategy, capacity targets, and risk management practices.

Requirements

• Experience leading network planning, architecture, or infrastructure strategy for large-scale Layer 1, Layer 2, or Layer 3 environments.
• Experience defining architecture standards, design principles, and implementation models across optical, transport, routing, and data center networking environments.
• Experience leading long-range capacity planning, investment prioritization, and infrastructure roadmap development in telecommunications, hyperscale, data center, or colocation environments.
• Experience leading network capacity deployment strategies, market expansion planning, and infrastructure readiness for new metros, products, or service launches.
• Experience defining and advancing an AI-enabled automation strategy using Python, APIs, data-driven workflows, automation frameworks, and AI tools to streamline planning, accelerate design decisions, improve forecasting, and reduce manual effort across network engineering processes.
• Knowledge of fiber types, transport systems, routing infrastructure, and scalable network architecture principles.
• Experience establishing governance, business processes, and operating models that improve consistency, quality, and execution at scale.
• Experience leading cross-functional programs and aligning engineering, operations, and business stakeholders around strategic network priorities.
• Excellent communication, executive presentation, and decision-making skills.

About the company

Digital Realty brings companies and data together by delivering the full spectrum of data center, colocation, and interconnection solutions. PlatformDIGITAL®, the company’s global data center platform, provides customers with a secure data meeting place and a proven Pervasive Datacenter Architecture (PDx®) solution methodology for powering innovation and efficiently managing Data Gravity challenges. Digital Realty gives its customers access to the connected data communities that matter to them with a global data center footprint of 300+ facilities in 50+ metros across 25+ countries on six continents.

The Technology & Innovation team strives to innovate alongside customers and empower their businesses to thrive. The team works closely with customers to develop insights-based, data-driven technical solutions and differentiated value propositions on PlatformDIGITAL® across the world. Operating in almost 50 cities globally, the team understands how rapidly the world is evolving and has built a best-in-class development model to qualify, package, and enable cloud-to-core-to-edge hybrid IT solutions. The deep technical heritage, combined with a global footprint, means the Technology Innovation team can create and deploy services and solutions that are at the heart of the digital economy.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Life and AD&D insurance
• 401k match
• Disability benefits
• Wellness and education benefits
• Employee stock purchase plan
• Paid time off and holidays

Pay

Compensation range: $170,000 – $190,000. This range represents the company’s good faith belief as to what it will pay as a base salary for this position at the time of posting. Individual pay is based on job-related skills, experience, and relevant education and/or training.