How a global telecom group built its first NOC and support teams in Romania: 450 hires in 24 months

The Mandate: Two Organizations, Starting With an Empty Room

A global telecommunications group chose Romania for a new shared services operation — one that would combine a Network Operations Center serving the group's European markets with a large multilingual technical and customer support function.

We were brought in to build the founding teams. Not to supplement an existing organization: to create the first ones.

A NOC is not a call center. A Network Operations Center is the nerve center of a telecom operator — the team that monitors live network infrastructure around the clock, detects incidents before customers do, and resolves them under time pressure measured in minutes. Downtime in a mobile network is not an inconvenience; it affects millions of subscribers and makes the evening news. These roles demand real network engineering competence, the temperament to work in 24/7 shift patterns, and composure during critical incidents.

And it had to be multilingual, at scale. The support organization served multiple European markets simultaneously, which meant technical competence alone was never enough: engineers needed English plus German, and support professionals needed French, Spanish, Italian, German or English at professional working level. In the Romanian market, the intersection of solid technical ability and genuine fluency in a second European language is narrow — and every multinational in the country is fishing in the same pond.

At volume, and at pace. Around 450 people across three distinct functions, over 24 months — wave after wave, while the client was simultaneously building its processes, its infrastructure and its employer brand from scratch.

Our Approach

Three talent strategies, run in parallel. We treated network operations, technical support and multilingual customer support as three different labor markets, because they are. Network specialists were sourced from telecom operators, ISPs and infrastructure providers, and assessed for both technical depth and shift-work suitability. Technical support specialists were mapped across service desk, applications and infrastructure support populations. Multilingual customer support professionals were reached through entirely different channels — language communities, international graduate pools, and the returning diaspora.

Structured language verification. Every candidate's declared language ability was validated at the level the role actually required. On multi-market operations, an overstated language level is not a minor inaccuracy — it surfaces as a service failure in front of a customer in Munich or Milan.

Teams built to hold under pressure. For 24/7 operations we assessed well beyond the CV: tolerance for shift patterns, stability under incident pressure, and the collaborative instincts that make a NOC function as a team at three in the morning.

Delivery discipline sustained over two years. Twenty-four months of continuous hiring is not a sprint — it is an operating rhythm. We held a consistent pipeline and a consistent quality bar across the full duration, so the client could scale its operation on a predictable schedule.

The Delivery

150 NOC engineers. A complete round-the-clock network operations capability, staffing the monitoring and incident response of live infrastructure across multiple European markets.

70 technical support specialists. Multiple support disciplines built out in parallel, covering the technical layers behind the client's services.

230 multilingual customer support professionals. A full multi-market support organization operating in five European languages.

~450 people in approximately 24 months. Three new functions, staffed from zero to operational scale, delivered on a sustained schedule that let the client bring markets online as planned.

The Long View: What That Foundation Became

We built the first teams. What grew on top of them is one of the most significant technology organizations in the country.

In the years that followed, the center expanded far beyond its original scope — from network operations and multilingual support into software engineering, cloud and infrastructure, IoT, data analytics and cybersecurity — becoming a global technology center of excellence serving the group's operations across dozens of countries. Today it employs several thousand professionals, ranks among Romania's largest IT&C employers, generates annual revenues in the hundreds of millions of euros, has opened offices in additional Romanian cities, and has been repeatedly certified as a Great Place to Work.

Every organization of that size started somewhere. This one started with the 450 people we recruited.

Key Takeaways

• Founding teams set the trajectory. The first hires into a greenfield operation define its standards, its culture and its credibility with the parent group. Getting the first 450 right is what earns a center its next several thousand.
• Mission-critical operations demand a different assessment. Recruiting for 24/7 network operations — where a slow response has consequences for millions of users — means evaluating temperament and resilience alongside technical skill.
• Multilingual recruitment at volume is its own discipline. Combining real technical competence with genuine fluency in German, French, Spanish or Italian requires dedicated sourcing channels and rigorous verification, not a broader job ad.
• Endurance is a capability. Delivering consistently for 24 consecutive months, at quality, across three distinct talent markets, is a different test than any single fast project — and it is the test a greenfield center launch actually sets.