Associate Director-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.

What You'll Be Doing…
As an Associate Director, you will lead a team of data scientists focused on a specific program(s) delivering a business outcome within a problem space. 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. 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.

This role is responsible for Forecasting, data analytics, Gen AI capabilities and people management across projects by applying various statistical techniques, business acumen & stake holder management.

The Associate Director, develops the team and brings in best in class methods. This role serves as a leader in AI Science with a focus on driving continuous improvement for the demand function. Having Domain knowledge of VCG/VBG is an Add-on.

Build and Manage the Team

• Building a diverse team with an inclusive culture and also attract and retain top data science and AI talent.
• Mentoring, guiding, and developing Data Scientists and people leaders( if applicable )
• Enabling career development via access to training resources, on the job coaching and mentoring

Deliver Business Outcomes & Influence Business Partners

• Leading and managing team responsible for deploying analytical solutions to inform forecasts and drive decision-making across various projects
• Developing and implementing Forecasting best practices
• Implementing generalized AI solutions that addresses several business outcomes across a problem space.
• Operating with a high degree of autonomy, accountability and a sense of urgency in delivering business outcomes.
• 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

• Enforcing the established 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.
• 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.
• Creating 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 experience in implementation of AI in commercial applications driving business value and are 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 four 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.
• Understanding and ability to explain both the code and the underlying math used in algorithms/models.
• Excellent coding proficiency in python, java, R, etc. Knowledge of AI/ML models, frameworks(keras, pytorch, etc.) and libraries/packages/apis (e.g., scikit)

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.

#AI&D
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.