Full-Time
Damage Prevention Technician 1
Zayo
1,001-5,000 employees
Fiber and transport network services provider
Compensation Overview
$16.25 - $25/hr
Fort Wayne, IN, USA
Remote
Must reside within 30 minutes of the Fort Wayne metro area; occasional travel and rotating 24/7/365 on-call availability are required.
 General Maintenance & Repair (1) |
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- 0-1+ years of relevant experience with utility locating, fiber optic cable builds, and field construction tasks is required.
- The candidate must be located within 30 minutes of the Fort Wayne, Indiana metro area.
- A high school diploma or equivalent is required.
- Proficiency in using computers, cell phones, test equipment, Microsoft Windows operating system, and Microsoft Office applications is required.
- The candidate must have a cell phone.
- The candidate must operate on-call 24/7/365 on a rotating schedule, including standby, call out, dispatch, and overtime, as required by the business, with some travel as needed.
- The candidate must follow all personal safety policies and procedures.
- The candidate must maintain eligibility to operate a company-issued vehicle under company policy, including having no more than two moving violations within the past three years and possessing a state-issued driver's license for the state in which they live.
- The candidate must regularly lift objects weighing up to 100 pounds and move them clear of the job site.
- Analyze blueprints to determine where construction projects will take place.
- Identify and map the location and depth of utilities for fiber optic cable and underground utilities.
- Document interactions, site information, and utilities in organizational software.
- Communicate with clients, engineers, and management.
- Use electrical, magnetic, GPS, blueprint-analysis, and radar techniques to measure utilities.
- Proactively identify potential problem areas to ensure the integrity of the network and company.
- Pinpoint the coordinates of lines using GPS or surveying equipment.
- Perform asset management processes and replenish on-site and truck materials.
- Coordinate shipping and receiving of company and customer materials.
- Maintain tools, test sets, and network equipment.
- Maintain network and site security and cleanliness, and follow policies related to company property.
- Inspect cabinets, buried cables, construction sites, and other outdoor facilities in various environments and weather conditions.
- Work independently and in team environments while interacting with this and other teams to achieve team goals.
- Perform other duties as assigned.
- A basic understanding of underground installations is preferred.
Zayo provides modern network solutions for businesses, focusing on fiber and transport, network connectivity, and managed services to support digital transformation. Its offerings enable secure, high-performance, cloud-based network architectures and managed edge networking, delivered through reliable fiber networks and managed services. The company differentiates itself by continuous network upgrades, emphasis on automation and reducing tool complexity to future-proof networks, and serving large, innovative clients (e.g., Dropbox) with tailored solutions. Zayo aims to help businesses stay competitive by simplifying networks, improving performance and security, and reducing costs through efficient, scalable connectivity.
Company Size
1,001-5,000
Company Stage
Debt Financing
Total Funding
$11.3B
Headquarters
Boulder, Colorado
Founded
2007
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- September 1, 2026 CEO Sowmyanarayan Sampath brings Verizon enterprise discipline to Zayo.
- Crown Castle’s fiber sale closed May 1, 2026, instantly widening Zayo’s metro density.
- Zayo’s April 24, 2026 $2.37 billion ABS financed continued expansion despite higher rates.
What critics are saying
- Delaware’s August 5, 2026 insurance loss leaves Zayo eating a $27.125 million settlement.
- January 2026 Service Delivery and Product layoffs signal reengineering pressure after leadership churn.
- If AI corridor demand disappoints, Zayo’s 2026 fiber build becomes stranded debt-heavy overcapacity.
What makes Zayo unique
- Zayo controls 224,000 route miles and 40,000 enterprise locations after Crown Castle.
- Zayo and NVIDIA are building 8,000 miles across six new AI corridors.
- Zayo sells owned, operated fiber capacity, not overlay software or leased middle-mile.
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Benefits
Health Insurance
Dental Insurance
Vision Insurance
401(k) Retirement Plan
Paid Vacation
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↓ -2%1 year growth
↓ -2%2 year growth
↓ -2%Zayo teams with NVIDIA to scale network capacity for AI factories. Industry experts point to network capacity as a major constraint on AI growth. #pressrelease August 6, 2026 Zayo, a leading digital infrastructure provider, today announced it is delivering critical network capacity to power today's AI ecosystem and accelerate the next generation of AI innovation with NVIDIA AI infrastructure. Through this collaboration, Zayo is building more than 8,000 miles of new long-haul fiber across the fastest-growing AI corridors and significantly expanding capacity across its existing infrastructure. As the gap between compute demand and available network capacity widens, Zayo is expanding bandwidth to help AI factories operate, scale, and innovate. Closing the AI network capacity gap. AI factories are reshaping the requirements of global network infrastructure, driving demand for fiber capacity at a scale the industry has never seen before. Long-haul fiber is critical to connecting workloads across the increasingly distributed AI ecosystem, including in new and emerging AI corridors where existing long-haul capacity is scarce or does not yet exist. But building this infrastructure remains one of the most complex challenges. Zayo's buildout will deliver six net-new long-haul routes across emerging AI corridors as well as overbuilds of existing network across 10 high-demand markets. Zayo builds network capacity for a broader AI ecosystem. AI cannot scale broadly if access to connectivity is limited to only the largest hyperscalers. Neoclouds, frontier model developers, and enterprises across healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and other industries increasingly depend on the same high-capacity network foundation that Zayo's network expansion will deliver. Over the last 18 months, Zayo has significantly expanded its AI-focused network buildout, with build and overbuild projects now underway spanning more than 15,000 route miles across North America. Its recently completed acquisition of Crown Castle's Fiber Solutions business also added 90,000 metro route miles and 40,000 on-net enterprise locations, strengthening Zayo's metro density for AI inference workloads. Zayo also recently introduced its AI Infrastructure Blueprint, a first-of-its-kind framework for connecting training, inference and interconnection environments across the AI ecosystem. Want more Light Reading stories in your Google search results? Join 62,000+ members. Yes it's completely free.
Zayo teams with NVIDIA to scale critical Network Capacity for AI factories. Business Wire Published Aug 06, 2026 Article content Industry experts point to network capacity as a major constraint on AI growth Article content DENVER - Zayo, a leading digital infrastructure provider, today announced it is delivering critical network capacity to power today's AI ecosystem and accelerate the next generation of AI innovation with NVIDIA AI infrastructure. Through this collaboration, Zayo is building more than 8,000 miles of new long-haul fiber across the fastest-growing AI corridors and significantly expanding capacity across its existing infrastructure. As the gap between compute demand and available network capacity widens, Zayo is expanding bandwidth to help AI factories operate, scale, and innovate. Article content Advertisement 1 Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Article content "AI is fundamentally reshaping where and how network infrastructure needs to be built across the U.S. Zayo has invested significantly in modelling where AI-driven demand will emerge and is actively expanding infrastructure ahead of that demand," said Steve Smith, CEO at Zayo. "As AI adoption accelerates and compute demand grows across the ecosystem, the need for new network corridors and scalable connectivity is increasing. While much of the market remains focused on overbuilding existing routes, Zayo is one of the few providers adding capacity to existing infrastructure while building in the locations and at the scale AI requires for long-term growth. Zayo's work combines decades of experience building and operating large-scale network infrastructure with NVIDIA accelerated computing to support AI connectivity across North America." Article content Top Stories Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. Article content Closing the AI Network Capacity Gap Article content "The next constraint for AI is not just compute - it is the ability to connect massive, distributed AI infrastructure at scale. As GPU clusters, AI factories, and hyperscaler deployments expand beyond the traditional data center hubs, long-haul fiber becomes a critical layer of the AI supply chain," said Dylan Patel, CEO, SemiAnalysis. "Zayo's work with NVIDIA directly addresses one of the most important infrastructure gaps in the market: building new high-capacity corridors where AI demand is emerging, not just adding capacity where networks already exist." Article content AI factories are reshaping the requirements of global network infrastructure, driving demand for fiber capacity at a scale the industry has never seen before. Long-haul fiber is critical to connecting workloads across the increasingly distributed AI ecosystem, including in new and emerging AI corridors where existing long-haul capacity is scarce or does not yet exist. But building this infrastructure remains one of the most complex challenges. Zayo's buildout will deliver six net-new long-haul routes across emerging AI corridors as well as overbuilds of existing network across 10 high-demand markets. Article content "AI is moving faster than ever, and the network is quickly becoming just as critical to that progress as compute itself," said Vladimir Troy, VP Engineering, AI Infrastructure, NVIDIA. "Zayo's work with NVIDIA is helping us get ahead of that curve; pairing Zayo's expertise in large-scale network infrastructure with NVIDIA's AI leadership to build the connectivity backbone the entire ecosystem needs to keep innovating." Article content Advertisement 2 Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Article content Zayo Builds Network Capacity for a Broader AI Ecosystem Article content AI cannot scale broadly if access to connectivity is limited to only the largest hyperscalers. Neoclouds, frontier model developers, and enterprises across healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and other industries increasingly depend on the same high-capacity network foundation that Zayo's network expansion will deliver. Article content "If we look at neoclouds specifically, we know their customers depend on them to make compute infrastructure accessible as soon as they need it, and network capacity is imperative to making that happen," said Smith. "As AI infrastructure becomes more distributed, access to high-capacity connectivity in the right markets is becoming critical to how quickly providers, like neoclouds, can bring new GPU capacity online and support customer demand. That's what makes our work with NVIDIA so important. Building new AI corridors where infrastructure is actually scaling helps remove a major bottleneck for the broader AI ecosystem." Article content Over the last 18 months, Zayo has significantly expanded its AI-focused network buildout, with build and overbuild projects now underway spanning more than 15,000 route miles across North America. Its recently completed acquisition of Crown Castle's Fiber Solutions business also added 90,000 metro route miles and 40,000 on-net enterprise locations, strengthening Zayo's metro density for AI inference workloads. Zayo also recently introduced its AI Infrastructure Blueprint, a first-of-its-kind framework for connecting training, inference and interconnection environments across the AI ecosystem. Article content "This is more than a network expansion; it's a strategic move to enable distributed environments and more specifically, the AI ecosystem. By working with NVIDIA and building additional capacity in key AI corridors, Zayo is enabling not just hyperscalers, but also neocloud providers and enterprise AI deployments to have the WAN connectivity required to scale. This kind of forward-looking strategy reflects a growing recognition that AI success depends on coordinated infrastructure across compute, storage, and network," said Bob Laliberte, Principal Analyst - Networking & Observability, theCUBE Research. Article content To learn more about Zayo's network expansion and how it's powering the next generation of AI, visit https://www.zayo.com/backbone-for-ai/About Zayo The world's digital future depends on networks that perform. Zayo builds and operates those networks. As the leading digital infrastructure provider, the Zayo network spans 32 million fiber miles and 224,000 route miles across North America and connects more than 400 markets globally. With dense long-haul and metro fiber connectivity, tailored connectivity solutions, and managed services, Zayo's network underpins the cloud, AI, and enterprise platforms powering the digital economy. Carriers, cloud providers, data centers, enterprises, schools, and governments rely on Zayo's future-ready infrastructure and expertise to design, scale, and operate the networks that connect what's next. Discover how Zayo connects what's next at www.zayo.com and follow us on LinkedIn. Article content View source version on businesswire.com: Article content Advertisement 1 This advertisement has not loaded yet.
What's up with... Jio Platforms, Tecnotree, Zayo. Jul 14, 2026 * Jio Platforms names new CEO ahead of IPO * Tecnotree receives more takeover interest * Verizon Consumer chief appointed Zayo CEO In today's industry news roundup: Jio Platforms appoints the head of its telco division as CEO as it prepares for a $4bn IPO; Tecnotree receives a "non-binding indication of interest" to rival its existing $131m takeover bid; Zayo CEO Steve Smith is retiring, with Verizon Consumer boss Sowmyanarayan Sampath set to replace him; and much more! Jio Platforms has appointed Pankaj Pawar, the boss of its telecom subsidiary Reliance Jio Infocomm, as its new group CEO ahead of an expected public offering. Pawar replaces Kiran Thomas, who resigned in March, according to information revealed as part of its draft initial public offering (IPO) papers, seen by The Economic Times. Pawar has been associated with the Reliance Group since the year 2000 and was most recently managing director of the telecom division, which includes the Jio mobile network. Jio Platforms - which is the holding company for billionaire Mukesh 'Ambani's digital businesses - is aiming to raise around $4bn with the IPO, making it one of India's largest listings in recent years. Finnish BSS vendor Tecnotree has received a "non-binding indication of interest" in the acquisition of the company, which already has one takeover offer on the table. In January, a consortium comprising the vendor's long-time CEO, Padma Ravichander, along with Helios Investment Partners and existing major Tecnotree investor Fitzroy Investments, offered to take the company private with an offer of €5.70 per share, a price that valued the company at €131m. Now, though, the vendor's board has received a letter from a "large, diversified Canadian technology investment and media company" that is interested in buying Tecnotree and values the company at €7.98 to €9.12 per share which, when the offer was announced to investors late on Monday, represented a premium of 40% to 60%. At the top of that price range, Tecnotree would be valued at almost €210m. News of the additional interest sent Tecnotree's share price up by 23% to €6.90 on the Helsinki Stock Exchange in trading on Tuesday. The vendor's board is "evaluating the opportunity". Zayo Group has announced that Verizon consumer chief Sowmyanarayan Sampath will replace Steve Smith as the company's CEO in September. Sampath has spent more than 12 years at Verizon in roles including CEO of Verizon's consumer division, and before that was chief revenue officer at Verizon Business, as well as president of global enterprise, and chief product officer. He also led Boston Consulting Group's global telecom practice for carriers across the world, according to his LinkedIn profile. Smith, who is retiring after five years at the helm of the global wholesale provider, was previously CEO and president at datacentre firm Equinix for more than a decade. SK Telecom (SKT) has been selected by South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT and National Intelligence Society Agency (NIA) to deploy AI-RAN infrastructure and develop "physical AI convergence services" as part of the country's Hyper-AI Network Infrastructure Development demo project. SKT aims to "verify ultra-low latency, high-reliability, and ultra-precision network technologies in industrial settings, which serve as the core foundation for the national agenda project, the AI Highway," the company noted in this announcement (in Korean). "For physical AI, such as robots, to perform perception, judgement and control in real time onsite... requires communication capable of exchanging large volumes of data without delay, as well as supporting infrastructure that can process AI computations beyond the robots' ability to handle on their own," noted SKT. The operator will work with four vendors - Ericsson, HFR Networks, Nokia and Samsung - on the project, and noted that it plans to "verify implementation methods suitable for service requirements by diversifying the configuration of AI-RAN computational resources, such as CPUs and GPUs, and quantitatively comparing performance in the same environment. Orange has created a Unified Cloud Platform team, comprising 700 experts from three divisions - Orange Business, Orange Innovation and Orange Wholesale - who will help the operator to be "more efficient, stronger and offer a new cloud infrastructure, highly sovereign, open source and modular for our customers and our internal needs," noted Jean Louis Le Roux, head of international networks at Orange, in this LinkedIn post. Michael Trabbia, CEO of Orange Wholesale, noted in his LinkedIn post that the move is part of the telco's Trust the Future strategy, and that the team will aim to "build a common private cloud technical foundation for the group... This evolution aims to industrialise our cloud capabilities, standardise our environments, accelerate automation and strengthen our agility on key services, such as Infrastructure as a Service, Container as a Service, Platform as a Service and AI as a Service. We capitalise on our internal expertise and our knowledge of open source to continue to gain flexibility, security and strategic autonomy so that our customers benefit from the best service, adapted to their needs and market developments." The move follows years of effort within Orange to develop its Orange Telco Cloud, which Laurent Leboucher, group CTO and EVP of networks at Orange, discussed with TelecomTV in April this year. BT Group has named Uzair Qadeer to replace Alison Wilcox, who is stepping down as chief people and culture officer, bringing an end to her second stint with the British telco at the end of this year. Wilcox returned to BT to oversee its people operations in May 2025 on an interim basis, following various portfolio roles across the NHS, a near-seven-year stint as BT's HR director and six years in various HR roles at Vodafone. According to a LinkedIn post, Wilcox always knew her return to BT would be "short and sweet". Her replacement Qadeer is currently group chief people officer at the BBC, a role he has held since 2023. His switch to BT will mark his first foray into telecom. Sticking with appointments, JT Group has named former BT Wholesale director Clive Goodwin as its next chief commercial officer. Goodwin brings more than two decades of telecom experience to the Channel Island-based telco, following a number of roles in BT's wholesale arm, before spending a decade at Vodafone, most notably as global head of commercial, operations and procurement - a position he left in October 2023. Goodwin will be tasked with overseeing JT's commercial strategy and global expansion, as the company integrates Manx Telecom, which it bought earlier this year. It also announced former Vodafone salesman Ben Carter has joined as JT's new head of enterprise. - The staff, TelecomTV Just published! Download TelecomTV's Trends in Telco AI Infrastructure Report for exclusive insights into how SK Telecom, Swisscom, Telenor, Telia and Telus are building AI infrastructure strategies and driving the emergence of "AI factory" models across the telecom industry.
Zayo, a leading digital infrastructure network provider, announced that Sowmyanarayan Sampath will become chief executive officer on 1 September 2026. Sampath, a former Verizon executive, will succeed Steve Smith, who is retiring as CEO but will remain on Zayo's board of directors. Sampath brings over 20 years of digital infrastructure experience, most recently serving as CEO of Verizon Consumer. He previously led Verizon Business and BCG's global telecom practice. Under Smith's leadership, Zayo expanded significantly, more than tripling its planned fibre expansion to over 15,000 route miles. The company also acquired Crown Castle's Fibre Solutions Business, adding approximately 90,000 route miles and 40,000 on-net enterprise locations. The transition reflects Zayo's focus on AI-driven growth and high-capacity connectivity demands.
Zayo announces planned CEO transition. Sowmyanarayan Sampath appointed CEO to drive the company's next phase of AI-related and enterprise growth; Steve Smith to remain on Board following retirement. #pressrelease July 14, 2026 Zayo, the leading digital infrastructure network provider, today announced a planned CEO transition, appointing former Verizon executive Sowmyanarayan Sampath as Chief Executive Officer (CEO), effective September 1, 2026. Sampath will succeed Steve Smith, who will retire as CEO following a transformative tenure that established Zayo as the foundational backbone of the AI economy. Smith will continue to serve as a member of Zayo's Board of Directors. Under Steve's leadership, Zayo has evolved from an acquisition-built network operator into the largest independent digital infrastructure network provider and a powerhouse of connectivity serving AI companies and enterprises across the U.S. Sampath's appointment provides long-term leadership and bolsters Zayo's market-leading position. Sampath brings more than two decades of large-scale digital infrastructure experience, most recently serving as CEO of Verizon Consumer, after previously leading Verizon Business and BCG's global telecom practice for carriers across the world. His extensive background in leading multi-billion-dollar enterprise and wholesale businesses through transformation and rapid technology shifts positions him to accelerate Zayo's commercial execution, scale for the demands of AI-driven growth, and meet rising demand for high-capacity connectivity. Want more Light Reading stories in your Google search results? Join 62,000+ members. Yes it's completely free.