Senior Strategic Analyst – Network Strategy & Investment at Ziply Fiber in Everett, Washington, United States

Job description

• Position Title: Senior Strategic Analyst – Network Strategy & Investment
• Base Salary: $110,400 to $162,000 annually DOE
• Benefits: Medical, dental, vision, 401k, flexible spending account, paid sick leave and paid time off, parental leave, quarterly performance bonus, training, career growth and education reimbursement programs.
• Ziply Fiber is a local internet service provider dedicated to elevating the connected lives of the communities we serve. We offer the fastest home internet in the nation, a refreshingly great customer experience, and affordable plans that put customers in charge.
• As our state-of-the-art fiber network expands, so does our need for team members who can help us grow and realize our goals.
• 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.
• The Senior Strategic Analyst – Network Strategy & Investment helps drive Ziply Fiber's most critical network investment decisions, independently structuring business problems, building financial and analytical models, and synthesizing large datasets into clear, actionable recommendations for senior leadership.
• The role spans network expansion, capital allocation, deployment economics, competitive intelligence, value engineering, and long-range network planning. The ideal candidate combines strong financial and strategic problem-solving skills with the technical aptitude to work directly with large-scale network and geospatial data.
• This is a high-ownership role for someone who can take a strategic question from initial hypothesis through analysis to executive recommendation with limited direction, drawing on strong prior business judgment, and analytical rigor to proactively drive business improvement.
• · Give leadership clear, fact-based visibility into where Ziply should invest, why, expected financial returns, key risks, and available alternatives.
• · Independently structure analyses, determine required data, develop models, challenge assumptions, and recommend a course of action.
• · Build repeatable analytical frameworks that improve the quality and speed of network investment decisions.
• · Develop a deep understanding of Ziply's network economics and connect financial outcomes with engineering and operational decisions.
• · Proactively identify opportunities and risks and initiate the analysis required to address them.
• · Become a trusted partner to business leaders by combining analytical rigor with practical business judgment.
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Responsibilities

• The Essential Duties and Responsibilities listed below are a range of duties performed by the employee and not intended to reflect all duties performed.
• Network Strategy & Investment Analysis
• · Independently structure and evaluate strategic questions related to network investment, expansion, capital allocation, and deployment strategy.
• · Build financial models evaluating NPV, IRR, payback, capital efficiency, cost per passing, and other investment-return metrics.
• · Develop scenario and sensitivity analyses to evaluate alternative deployment strategies, construction methods, timing assumptions, costs, demand, and risk.
• · Develop business cases and investment recommendations for new markets, network expansions, and changes to existing deployment plans.
• · Evaluate trade-offs between capital requirements, deployment timing, operational considerations, competitive dynamics, and long-term financial returns.
• · Translate complex analytical findings into clear recommendations and decision frameworks for senior leadership.
• · Support annual and long-range capital planning and identifying opportunities to improve returns across the network investment portfolio
• Network Expansion & Capital Planning
• · Identify, prioritize, and evaluate network expansion opportunities using financial, demand, competitive, operational, and geospatial data.
• · Develop analytical frameworks to rank markets and build areas based on investment return, strategic value, deployment feasibility, capital efficiency, and risk.
• · Evaluate changes to build plans and quantify their impact on capital requirements, timing, passings, and expected financial returns.
• · Analyze deployment economics across markets, construction methods, vendors, and network configurations.
• · Track approved investments against original assumptions and identify drivers of cost, schedule, or return variance.
• · Identify opportunities to improve build sequencing and capital deployment based on changing market conditions and new information.
• Value Engineering & Capital Efficiency
• · Analyze engineering, construction, labor, material, and vendor cost drivers to identify opportunities to improve capital efficiency.
• · Develop and maintain cost benchmarks and unit-economic frameworks across markets and deployment types.
• · Evaluate alternative engineering and construction approaches and quantify their impact on cost, schedule, risk, and financial returns.
• · Partner with Engineering, Construction, Procurement, Operations, and Finance to develop business cases for cost-reduction initiatives.
• · Establish analytical frameworks to prioritize opportunities and track realized savings against expected benefits.
• · Perform root-cause analyses of cost and schedule variances and recommend corrective actions.
• Competitive & Market Intelligence
• · Develop analytical views of competitor network presence, expansion activity, market overlap, and potential implications for Ziply's investment strategy.
• · Combine internal and external datasets to identify emerging competitive threats and investment opportunities.
• · Assess competitive intensity at the market, neighborhood, and address level where appropriate.
• · Translate competitive intelligence into recommendations for market prioritization, build sequencing, and capital allocation.
• · Develop repeatable frameworks for incorporating competitive activity into network investment decisions.
• · Performs other duties as required to support the business and evolving organization.

Requirements

• · Bachelor's degree in Finance, Economics, Business, Engineering, Data Science, Computer Science, Geography/GIS, or another quantitative or analytical field.
• · 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 analytical problems and developing recommendations from incomplete or imperfect information.
• · Strong financial modeling skills, including experience with investment cases, NPV/IRR analysis, scenario modeling, sensitivity analysis, and/or capital planning.
• · Advanced Microsoft Excel skills and demonstrated ability to build complex analytical models from the ground up.
• · Experience working with large datasets and combining multiple data sources to answer complex business questions.
• · Ability to translate analytical findings into concise recommendations for senior leadership and non-technical stakeholders.
• · Strong written and verbal communication skills, including experience creating executive-level presentations.
• · Demonstrated ability to identify the next analytical question without being explicitly directed.
• · Strong business judgment and ability to balance analytical rigor with real-world operational constraints.
• · Ability to independently manage multiple workstreams in a fast-moving environment.
• · Exceptional analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to break problems into structured analyses.
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• · Experience in telecommunications, broadband, infrastructure, utilities, transportation, energy, real estate development, or another capital-intensive industry.
• · Experience supporting network expansion, infrastructure investment, market prioritization, capital planning, or value engineering.
• · Strong SQL proficiency, including the ability to query and integrate data 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 equivalent spatial-analysis tools.
• · Experience developing financial models incorporating geospatial or address-level data.
• · Experience evaluating construction or infrastructure economics, including cost per passing, cost per mile, cost per foot, productivity, vendor economics, or similar unit-cost measures.
• · Experience developing executive-level business cases, investment recommendations, or strategic presentations.
• · Experience building dashboards, automated analytical workflows, or repeatable decision-support tools.
• · MBA, master's degree, or other relevant advanced degree is a plus but not required.

Skills

Required

• Advanced Microsoft Excel
• Scenario and sensitivity analysis
• Large dataset analysis
• Data integration from multiple sources
• Executive-level presentation creation
• Strong written and verbal communication
• Business judgment
• Analytical rigor
• Workstream management

Preferred

• SQL
• Python (pandas, geopandas)
• GIS platforms (QGIS, ArcGIS)
• Construction or infrastructure economics
• Dashboard building
• Automated analytical workflows
• Decision-support tools