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TextNow

Tech Lead, Mobile Core Network Engineering

5d ago
USALead
TextNow

Tech Lead, Mobile Core Network Engineering

5d ago
USALeadawssremobile core networklte5g

Technical leadership for the mobile core network platform, bridging vendor managed services and internal teams to support and evolve a cloud-hosted LTE and 5G core network.

Responsibilities

  • We are looking for a hands-on  Tech Lead, Mobile Core Network Engineering  to own the health and evolution of our mobile core platform. Our cloud-hosted core runs in AWS, with our mobile core vendor providing managed services for day-to-day operations. This role is the critical bridge between our vendor’s Managed Services team and our internal engineering, product, and operations teams.  
  • You’ll be the technical owner of the mobile core, combining deep technical expertise with strong coordination skills. You won’t just manage vendor deliverables—you’ll dive into the technical details, challenge approaches when needed, and ensure our core network evolves to meet the demands of a growing subscriber base. This role has a clear growth path into technical and people leadership as the team scales.  
  • A note on background:  We know that people who have operated a mobile core at scale are rare. If you’re a strong SRE or infrastructure engineering leader with deep networking knowledge and a track record of managing complex, vendor-operated platforms, we want to hear from you—even if you haven’t worked with 3GPP technologies before. We’ll invest in helping you build the telco-specific domain knowledge.  
  • Own the Mobile Core Platform: Take end-to-end accountability for the health, performance, and evolution of TextNow's mobile core (HSS, PGW, PCRF, and related functions running in AWS). Drive capacity planning and platform evolution to support growing scale.
  • Manage Vendor Relationships: Serve as the primary technical interface with our mobile core vendor's Managed Services team and TextNow's broader carrier partners. Review vendor-proposed changes and architectural decisions, catch errors before production, and hold partners accountable to SLAs. Oversee vendor software upgrade cycles, coordinate upgrade windows, and ensure smooth rollouts. 
  • Build AI-Driven Operational Capabilities: Design and deliver AI tooling to improve operational health, including agentic performance analysis, automated diagnostics, and accelerated root cause analysis. Continuously evolve how the team uses AI to raise the bar on operational excellence.
  • Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Provide technical direction and mentorship across the Telecom Engineering pod, growing into people leadership as the team scales.
  • Incident Response & On-Call Support: Participate in an on-call rotation, troubleshoot issues, and drive incident resolution to minimize downtime. Conduct post-mortems and implement corrective actions to enhance reliability.
  • Cross-Functional Coordination: Partner with product, engineering, and other pods to prioritize and sequence network asks. Translate internal requirements into actionable work for the team and vendors. 
  • Platform Evolution: Contribute to the long-term technical roadmap for the core network. Develop and improve monitoring, alerting, and operational tooling for core network health. Evaluate new technologies and drive initiatives to reduce operational burden and increase automation.  

Requirements

  • 7+ years operating highly available production infrastructure in the cloud (AWS preferred)   
  • Background in Site Reliability, Infrastructure, Platform, or Network Engineering
  • Strong networking fundamentals and production troubleshooting: routing, DNS, load balancing, VPNs, firewalls
  • Experience managing external vendors and their deliverables, not just working alongside them
  • Hands-on Kubernetes experience
  • Experience with observability platforms (Datadog, Grafana, Prometheus, or similar)
  • Track record leading complex technical initiatives across multiple teams
  • Comfortable owning production incident response andon-call  

Nice to have

  • Experience with Infrastructure as Code tooling (Terraform, CloudFormation, or similar)  
  • Experience with a language such as Go, Python, or similar scripting languages  
  • Experience with carrier, telecom, networking, or mobile infrastructure   

Other

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  • TextNow is on a mission to make communications affordable and accessible for everyone. As a full MVNO operating our own mobile core network over LTE and 5G NSA, we have the unique advantage of controlling our network infrastructure end-to-end. We operate the HSS, PGW, and other critical network functions, giving us the flexibility to innovate and deliver exceptional service to millions of users.  
  • Rare opportunity to own a mobile core network at a full MVNO—not just configure someone else’s  
  • High-impact role: your work directly affects millions of users’ connectivity  
  • Small, senior team where your decisions and leadership shape the platform’s direction  
  • Remote-friendly culture with a collaborative, low-ego engineering organization  
  • Competitive compensation, equity, and comprehensive benefits  
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