Assoc Dir-AI Science

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. Want in? Join the #VTeamLife.

Associate Director – VBG AI Science Verizon is a leading provider of technology, communications, information and entertainment products, transforming the way we connect across the globe. We’re a diverse network of people driven by our ambition and united in our shared purpose to shape a better future. Here, we have the ability to learn and grow at the speed of technology, and the space to create within every role. Together, we are moving the world forward – and you can too. Dream it. Build it. Do it here

What You’ll Be Doing… As an Associate Director, you will be leading a team focused on a specific charter driving business value across multiple programs within a particular domain with people managers and senior data scientists reporting directly to you. The AI capabilities will include predictive, prescriptive and adaptive applications for all predictions and inferences at Verizon along with modular components or core capabilities that can foster reuse in the team. 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. An ideal candidate will have excellent communication skills, critical thinking, and strategic thinking skills above and beyond the technical knowledge and leadership skills required for this position.

Build and Manage the Team

• Building a diverse team with a strong leadership pipeline and an inclusive culture and also attract and retain top data science and AI talent.
• Contributing to driving world class employee satisfaction through the implementation of relevant organizational initiatives that build on employee commitment
• Mentoring, guiding, and Senior Data Scientists and people leaders
• Defining the objectives and targets for key results to drive an outcome-oriented practice
• Enabling career development via access to training resources, on the job coaching and mentoring
• Deliver Business Outcomes & Influence Business Partners
• Creating the strategy for the problem space in line with the overall vision of the organization and the key feedback from internal and external stakeholders
• Implementing generalized AI solutions that addresses several business outcomes across a problem space.
• Serving as a technical thought leader and advisor to the organization
• Aligning with business partners to enable your team to design, develop, and deploy large-scale AI products with closed loop optimization in a production environment.

Elevate the AI Practice

• Establishing best practices and governance routines to ensure adherence to model management practices, peer reviews, and compliance to our policy standards for privacy, ethics and bias.
• 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.
• Fostering an innovation culture where our scientists are engaged in pioneering work that can be shared with the world in a number of ways like inventions, open source, publications, etc.
• Inspiring our team to create monetizable AI applications that can be leveraged both within Verizon and externally with Verizon’s partners.

What We’re Looking For .. You are a dynamic leader with outstanding analytical expertise and strong technical leadership along with experience in implementation of AI in commercial applications driving business value and is proud to be a hands on practitioner. You are constantly challenging the status quo and identifying new innovative ways to drive your team towards new ways of working that creates efficiencies.

You’ll Need To Have

• Bachelor’s degree or six or more years of work experience.
• Six or more years of relevant work experience.
• Five or more years of experience leading and building data science teams and talent.
• Experience delivering business outcomes in large and complex business organizations or fast growing startup businesses.
• Ability to communicate complex model designs and outcomes in business terms to a non-technical audience.
• Ability to convert vision into strategy and create an execution plan
• Uunderstanding and ability to explain both the code and the underlying math used in algorithms/models.
• Strong coding proficiency in python, java, R, etc. Knowledge of AI/ML models, frameworks(keras, pytorch, etc.) and libraries/packages/apis (e.g., scikit)
• Ability to showcase evidence of exceptional ability in AI/ML and also showcase decisive leadership

Even better if you have one or more of the following:

• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Mathematics or similar field is preferred
• Advanced knowledge of math, probability, statistics, and models
• Experience with Hadoop, AWS/GCP/Azure or other distributed compute services and cloud environments
• Exposure to data structures, data modeling and software architecture
• Excellent cross-functional collaboration skills & Outstanding analytical and problem solving skills Where you’ll be working In this hybrid role, you'll have a defined work location that includes work from home and assigned office days set by your manager. Scheduled Weekly Hours 40 Equal Employment Opportunity Verizon is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, gender, disability or any other legally protected characteristics.