Described herein are systems and methods that perform coarse chromatic dispersion (CD) compensation by applying precomputed coarse front-end equalizer (FEE) tap weights to a receiver based on an assumed propagation distance. After a waiting period, the FEE tap weights are applied, and it is determined whether the FEE tap weights cause a decision-directed tracking of channel rotations to satisfy a stability metric. In response to the stability metric not being satisfied, the assumed propagation distance is adjusted and used to obtain updated FEE tap weights. Conversely, if the stability metric is satisfied, a fine CD compensation is performed that comprises maintaining the updated FEE tap weights; performing an iterative least-mean-squared (LMS) error adaption to adjust Back-End Equalizer (BEE) tap weights and obtain updated BEE tap weights; and using the updated BEE tap weights to adjust the FEE tap weights to, ultimately, have the BEE output an equalized data bit stream.