AVP — Network Automation & Infrastructure AI

When you join Verizon you want more out of a career. A place to share your ideas freely — even if they’re daring or different. Where the true you can learn, grow, and thrive. At Verizon, we power and empower how people live, work and play by connecting them to what brings them joy. We do what we love — driving innovation, creativity, and impact in the world. Our V Team is a community of people who anticipate, lead, and believe that listening is where learning begins. In crisis and in celebration, we come together — lifting our communities and building trust in how we show up, everywhere & always.

About the role

Verizon is building one of the most advanced autonomous networks in the industry — self-healing, closed-loop, and increasingly agentic — across a national, multi-vendor 5G footprint. We are looking for an Associate Vice President to own the run layer of that network: the automation and AI that turn virtualized RAN and 5G Core into self-optimizing, energy-aware, cloud-native infrastructure. You will lead the engineering organization and the automation platform that already operates at a national scale, and take Verizon from human-led operations toward TM Forum Level 4 autonomy across Plan, Build, and Run. This is a builder’s role for a leader who wants to work at the frontier of cloud-native networking and applied AI — backed by the scale of Verizon.

Responsibilities

• Obsessed with the customer
  • Tie automation to experience. Turn reliability and customer-experience targets into closed-loop operations that detect, diagnose, and resolve issues before customers feel them — the foundation of a self-healing network.
  • Own the execution of intent. Partner with the network intelligence organization: take the RAN and cross-domain intent they generate and act on it through automated, policy-governed change on the live network.
• Build with speed
  • Automate the virtualized network. Own zero-touch lifecycle, upgrade, scaling, and healing for virtualized RAN (L2/L3) and 5G Core network functions across a multi-vendor, cloud-native environment.
  • Make the infrastructure AI-native. Lead AI/ML-driven optimization of compute and energy — dynamic power management across vCPU and radio resources, workload placement, and capacity — so the network optimizes itself.
  • Own and scale the platform. Run the orchestration, closed-loop assurance, and on-premises AI inference platform that already delivers hundreds of thousands of virtualized RAN upgrades and millions of automated actions each year — and take it to the next level.
  • Set the reference architecture. Define the agentic operating model, policy-as-code guardrails, and safe-autonomy standards for the run layer across domains and vendors.
• Drive excellence
  • Build and lead the team. Grow and lead a distributed engineering organization spanning cloud-native and SRE, MLOps, and network automation, with multiple director-level leaders.
  • Own the autonomy roadmap. Drive toward Level 4 against hard metrics: zero-touch success rate, mean-time-to-resolve, automation coverage, and energy savings.
  • Represent Verizon externally. Engage industry and standards bodies (TM Forum, O-RAN, 3GPP) and technology and hyper scaler partners.
  • Keep autonomy safe. Ensure the security, resilience, and regulatory compliance of automated action on the production network.

Requirements

• Required:
  • Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field, or four or more years of equivalent work experience.
  • Ten or more years in large-scale network or software engineering, including five or more years leading distributed, cross-functional technical organizations.
  • Proven delivery of cloud-native network functions (CNF/VNF), NFV, or SDN at carrier or hyperscale.
  • Hands-on depth in network automation, orchestration, and closed-loop assurance.
  • Experience applying AI/ML to infrastructure — anomaly detection, energy or resource optimization, or autonomous operations.
  • Working knowledge of 5G Core, virtualized and O-RAN, edge, and multi-cloud or on-premises AI infrastructure.
• Preferred:
  • Master’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field.
  • Experience moving an operator toward TM Forum autonomous networks Level 4.
  • Production experience with agentic AI or LLM-based operations.
  • Cloud-native platform leadership — Kubernetes, GitOps, SRE — and network energy-efficiency programs.
  • Experience with hyper scaler partnerships (Google Cloud, AWS, Azure) and on-premises AI inference at the edge.
  • Ability to translate deep technical strategy for board-level stakeholders and to lead cultural change across engineering.

Schedule

In this hybrid role, you'll have a defined work location that includes working from home and a minimum of three days per week in the office, which will be set by your manager. Scheduled weekly hours: 40.

Pay

The annual salary range for this role based on a full-time schedule is $191,500.00 - $367,000.00. This is an incentive-based position with the potential to earn more. For part-time roles, compensation will be adjusted to reflect hours.

Benefits

• Health and wellness benefits: medical, dental, vision, short and long-term disability, basic life insurance, supplemental life insurance, AD&D insurance, identity theft protection, pet insurance, and group home & auto insurance.
• Retirement and savings: matched 401(k) savings plan.
• Time off: up to 8 company-paid holidays per year, up to 6 personal days per year, and up to 15 days of vacation per year (growing with additional service).
• Family support: paid parental leave, adoption assistance.
• Education: tuition assistance.
• Other incentives: premium pay (e.g., overtime, shift differential, holiday pay, allowances).