Associate Director, AI Science

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. Want in? Join the V Team Life.

As an Associate Director of AI Science, you will use deep technical expertise in data science and AI methods to implement AI in commercial applications and lead a team.

You and your team will focus on proactive research on the next generation of AI methods with a focus on building ethical AI capabilities and designing models and model testing and validations practices that eliminate potential for biases. You will work closely with data science teams and the entire data scientist community at Verizon in proactively designing and developing unbiased and ethical AI capabilities. These AI capabilities will include predictive, prescriptive and adaptive applications for all predictions and inferences at Verizon. Models will typically get implemented on premise, in cloud and/or on the edge and in both real-time and batch mode depending upon the business applications.

At Verizon, we are on a multi-year journey to industrialize our data science and AI capabilities. Very simply, this means that AI will fuel all decisions and business processes across the company. At $130B+ in annual revenue, this is a pioneering opportunity to design and shape AI at scale in the Telco industry. With our leadership in bringing 5G network nationwide, the opportunity for AI will only grow exponentially in going from enabling billions of predictions to possibly trillions of predictions that are automated and real-time.

Develop Next Generation AI Capabilities

• Leading in developing the next generation of AI that protects the privacy of our customers and ensures that our modeling practices are ethical and bias-free. Bring thought leadership in this space by introducing ways of identifying and testing for biases in our models. Introduce new methods to protect the confidentiality of our data.

• Developing testing and validation rigor for all new and next-generation AI methods.

• Collaborating with data scientist teams and senior leaders to ensure model testing and validation discipline is followed for all models including models deployed in production.

Build and Manage the Team

• Building a high performing team of data scientists that is highly engaged, operates with high degree to autonomy, accountability and a sense to urgency in delivering on business outcomes

• Building a diverse team with an inclusive culture

• Attracting and retain top talent with deep technical expertise to Verizon

• Enabling career development via access to training resources, on the job coaching and mentoring

• Helping create an environment where our scientists are engaged in pioneering work that can be shared with the world in a number of ways like open source, publications, etc.

Technical Thought Leadership

• Operating as an expert and thought leader both within Verizon and externally within industry

• Serving as trusted advisor to all stakeholders at Verizon

• Coaching and mentor our high-potential talent

Elevate the AI Practice

• Partnering with academia and startup ecosystem to identify and potentially bring in new AI approach that can be of value to Verizon.

• Staying informed on the latest advancements in AI and technology space, finding ways to deliver value by applying and customizing these to our specific problem space.

• Helping create an environment where our scientists are engaged in pioneering work that can be shared with the world in a number of ways like open source, publications, etc.

• Inspiring our team to create AI applications designed with bias considerations and that promotes ethical AI both within Verizon and externally with Verizon's partners.

• Establishing best practices and governance routines to ensure adherence to model management policies, peer reviews, and compliance to our policy standards for privacy, ethics, and bias.

You can visualize the big picture strategy but can also break it down into the components to get the job done. You believe that the best decisions are based on data and you're the one that knows how to tease out the key learning within a dataset. You have credibility with people because you are a specialist in all things data but you also know how to bring it down to the level that your audience can understand-that's practical and will help the business improve. And you're an effective and inspiring leader who brings out the best in others.

• Bachelor's degree or four or more years of work experience.

• Eight or more years of relevant experience required, demonstrated through one or a combination of work and/or military experience, or specialized training.

• Master's degree in statistics, mathematics, analytics, engineering, computer science, or another technical and/or financial discipline.

• Direct experience with leading models research and validation with a focus on topics like bias and ethical AI, experience in a manager capacity managing research-oriented talent

• In-depth working experience in Deep Learning Framework (e.g. Pytorch), Generative AI (e.g. LLM, Multimodal LLM, Alignment) and Distributed systems.

• High-level understanding and ability to explain both the code and the underlying math used in algorithms/models.

• Excellent coding proficiency with demonstrated expertise in Python, Java, R, etc. Expert level knowledge of AI/ML models, frameworks(keras, pytorch, etc.) and libraries/packages/apis (e.g., scikit)

• Developing models and algorithms independently, writing your own code, developing strategy for algorithmic experimentation, and deploying in production

• Experience with both batch and streaming models in production

• Advanced knowledge of math, probability, statistics, and models

• Experience with Hadoop, AWS or other distributed compute services

• Exposure to data structures, data modeling and software architecture skills

If Verizon and this role sound like a fit for you, we encourage you to apply even if you don't meet every "even better" qualification listed above.

Verizon is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to veteran status, disability or other legally protected characteristics.