AI Engineer III

Victra; Durham, Northern (NC, KY); Hybrid; USD 130,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Paid training and career development

Health, dental, and vision insurance

401k retirement plan

Tuition reimbursement

Employee discounts on Verizon services

Referral bonuses

Career pathing opportunities

Job summary

Victra, Verizon’s premier retailer, is building AI into store operations with a hybrid Durham, NC role for an AI Engineer III. You will architect and code AI-based systems, design a shared agent platform, and mentor junior engineers while ensuring security and governance across business data.

You will apply leadership principles to deliver customer-focused AI solutions, collaborate across teams, and evaluate build-versus-buy options to align with company goals.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS, IS, or equivalent.
• Hands-on coding experience; Python a plus.
• Experience delivering cloud-based AI/agent systems.

Responsibilities

• Build and ship AI agent systems used by store employees with evaluation and monitoring.
• Design shared platform for agents including context, permissions, runtimes, and auditability.
• Guide on agent frameworks and observability for reliable performance.
• Mentor early-career engineers through pairing and coaching in engineering processes.

Skills

Python programming

Cloud computing

Agent development

Mentoring

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related

Tools

Azure

Azure AI Foundry

Claude Code / Codex

LLM observability stack

Job description

LOCATION: Durham, NC (Hybrid)

ABOUT US

Victra is Verizon’s largest premium retailer in the United States. We thrive on collaboration, innovation, and performance. Our mission is to “Connect technology to life in a trustworthy, fun, and profitable way”.We work closely with Verizon and our brand partners to deliver exceptional product offerings, promotions, and campaigns that drive in-store traffic and revenue.

JOB DESCRIPTION

Victra is building AI into how our stores run and how we operate our business. Over the next year, this includes a chat assistant for our field teams, a voice agent for our call center, a pipeline for turning store video into insights, and more.

As an AI Engineer III, you will design and build these tools and the platform connecting our systems and teams with the context, guardrails, and security needed to act on real business data. You will define the architecture, write code, and mentor early-career engineers. This is a hands-on role focused primarily on building AI-based systems.

You will apply Victra’s core leadership principles through customer-focused solutions, results-driven delivery, strong cross-functional relationships, strategic technical decisions, change management, and the development of engineering talent.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Customer Focus and Results Driven: Build and ship agent systems that employees use in their daily work, with evaluation and monitoring in place before launch.
• Design and build the shared platform for agents, including business context, permitted actions, identity and permissions, runtime environments, and auditability.
• Provide guidance on agent frameworks and observability to support reliable, measurable system performance.
• Take agents from answering questions to taking actions, defining safe stages for recommendations, actions requiring approval, and autonomous execution.
• Relationship Building: Collaborate with other engineering teams to develop reference architectures and implementations they can adopt.
• Strategic Thinking: Evaluate build-versus-buy options and recommend solutions aligned with business needs and technical requirements.
• Change Management: Design platform-agnostic systems that preserve flexibility and help Victra adapt as AI capabilities evolve.
• Participate in framework and platform evaluations and reviews of technical proposals.
• Talent Management: Mentor early-career engineers through pairing, coaching on engineering processes, and support for career development.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

• 5+ years building software or cloud systems, with at least 3 years delivering to the cloud (Azure preferred).
• Experience with agentic development tools (e.g. Claude Code, Codex, or similar).
• At least one AI or agent system you shipped to production with named users and a working evaluation loop.
• Working knowledge of Azure AI Foundry, including the resource model and what Agent Service needs from the network.
• Strong Azure fundamentals: identity and RBAC, networking and private connectivity, monitoring, and cost management.
• Current hands-on coding ability (Python a plus).
• Fluency with at least one open-source agent framework and one LLM observability stack.
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, or equivalent experience.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience with AWS Bedrock or another second model platform, and a view on what actually ports between them.
• Computer vision work, particularly still-image processing.
• Retail, multi-site, or field-operations software.

WHY JOIN US?

• Paid training and career development opportunities.
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance.
• 401k retirement plan.
• Tuition reimbursement.
• Employee discounts on Verizon services.
• Referral bonuses.
• Career pathing opportunities.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

We're proud to be an equal opportunity employer - and celebrate our employees' differences, regardless of race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, or Veteran status. Different makes us better.