Associate Director - AI Platform Engineering

Verizon; Basking Ridge (NJ); Hybrid; USD 126,000 - 242,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

401(k) matching

Paid time off

Flexible hybrid schedule

Job summary

Verizon is hiring a senior engineering leader to drive delivery for the Adaptive Intelligence Gateway and ADLC platforms. You will lead 3–5 engineers, own the roadmap, and translate complex architecture into scalable services used by thousands of Verizon developers.

You will operate in a hybrid work model with co-located and remote collaboration, aiming for 99.9% uptime and aggressive latency targets while enabling real-time cost attribution and business onboarding across multiple BUs.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or four or more years of work experience.
• Eight or more years of relevant experience required, demonstrated through work or military experience or training.
• Technical leadership experience managing software or platform engineers.
• Experience running Kubernetes at production scale.
• Experience operating in multi-cloud environments (GCP and AWS).
• Experience with AI/ML infrastructure: model serving, inference optimization, and LLMOps.
• Experience building developer platforms - SDKs, CLIs, developer portals, or self-service onboarding.
• Experience with FinOps or cost allocation models (chargeback, budget enforcement, usage attribution).

Responsibilities

• Own the engineering roadmap for AI Gateway and Agent Development Lifecycle platforms.
• Design and deliver intelligent model routing and multi-provider failover.
• Ship the Agent Registry with zero-trust identity and SDKs with LLMOps guardrails.
• Maintain SLA targets like 99.9% Gateway uptime and <2s P95 latency.
• Drive consolidation of 8+ BU AI integrations onto a single gateway.
• Onboard 5+ BU teams on the platform within 6 months.
• Lead and grow a team of 3–5 platform engineers.

Skills

Technical leadership

Kubernetes production

Multi-cloud (GCP, AWS)

AI/ML infrastructure

Developer platforms (SDKs/CLIs)

FinOps / cost attribution

Education

Bachelor's degree or 4+ years experience

Tools

Kubernetes

GCP

AWS

vLLM / LLM Gateways

SPIFFE/SPIRE

Job description

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...

You'll lead engineering delivery for two foundational pillars of Verizon's enterprise AI Platform - the Adaptive Intelligence Gateway that routes every AI request across all business units and the Agent Development Lifecycle (ADLC) that governs how AI agents are built, registered, and deployed. You'll manage a team of 3-5 engineers, own the engineering roadmap, and translate platform architecture into production-grade services that thousands of Verizon developers depend on.

• Owning AI Gateway engineering. Design and deliver intelligent model routing, multi-provider failover (Google Vertex, AWS Bedrock, OpenAI), per-BU FinOps and chargeback, semantic caching, and self-service tenant onboarding on a Kubernetes/Istio foundation with JWT-driven multi-tenant namespace isolation.
• Delivering the Agent Development Lifecycle. Ship the Agent Registry with zero-trust identity (SPIFFE/SPIRE), the Verizon Agent SDK with pre-integrated LLMOps/FinOps/guardrails, the MCP Tool Gateway, and an ArgoCD-managed DevSecOps pipeline with canary deployments and auto-rollback.
• Hitting the SLAs that keep the platform trusted. 99.9% Gateway uptime, 2,000ms P95 latency, Mean Time to Agent Deploy reduced from 21 days to 7 days, 95%+ Agent & Registry Compliance.
• Driving enterprise consolidation and cost control. Consolidate 8+ independent BU AI integrations onto one managed gateway, enable real-time cost attribution, and unlock $500K+ quarterly optimization savings through intelligent routing.
• Onboarding the business. Land 5+ BU teams on the platform within 6 months, ship Agent Registry GA and SDK v1.0, and establish the engineering operating cadence with Architecture, Operations, and BU consumers.
• Leading the team. Recruit, coach, and grow a team of 3-5 platform engineers; set the engineering bar, review designs, and remove blockers so the team ships.

What we're looking for...

You'll need to have:

• 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.
• Technical leadership experience managing software or platform engineers.
• Experience running Kubernetes at production scale.
• Experience operating in multi-cloud environments (GCP and AWS).
• Experience with AI/ML infrastructure: model serving (vLLM, LLM Gateways, or equivalent), inference optimization, and LLMOps.
• Experience building developer platforms - SDKs, CLIs, developer portals, or self-service onboarding.
• Experience with FinOps or cost allocation models (chargeback, budget enforcement, usage attribution).

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

• A Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or an MBA.
• Experience with API gateway patterns: JWT authentication, rate limiting, traffic splitting, circuit breakers, and mTLS
• Software or platform engineering experience.
• Experience with agentic AI frameworks (LangGraph, Google ADK, CrewAI, or similar).
• Familiarity with MCP (Model Context Protocol) and A2A (Agent-to-Agent) standards.
• Experience implementing zero-trust security (SPIFFE/SPIRE, OPA/Rego).
• Experience with CDC pipelines and event-driven data platforms (BigQuery, Kafka).
• Experience delivering platforms in a telecom or large regulated enterprise (CPNI, PCI-DSS, SOX).
• Experience designing Responsible AI guardrails, evaluation pipelines, or model governance.
• Experience with observability stacks (Jaeger, Prometheus/Grafana, ELK, or BigQuery-based).
• Certifications: AWS Solutions Architect, GCP Professional Cloud Architect, CKA/CKAD.

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.

Where you'll be working

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. Employees are responsible for maintaining compliance with hybrid work policies.

Scheduled Weekly Hours 40

Equal Employment Opportunity

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

Benefits and Compensation

Our benefits are designed to help you move forward in your career, and in areas of your life outside of Verizon. From health and wellness benefit options including: 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. We also offer a matched 401(k) savings plan, up to 8 company paid holidays per year and up to 6 personal days per year, paid parental leave, adoption assistance and tuition assistance, plus other incentives, we've got you covered with our award-winning total rewards package. Depending on the role, employees have the opportunity to receive compensation in the form of premium pay such as overtime, shift differential, holiday pay, allowances, etc. Newly hired employees receive up to 15 days of vacation per year, which grows with additional service. For part-timers, your coverage will vary as you may be eligible for some of these benefits depending on your individual circumstances.

The salary will vary depending on your location and confirmed job-related skills and experience. This is an incentive based position with the potential to earn more. For part-time roles, your compensation will be adjusted to reflect your hours.The annual salary range for the location(s) listed on this job requisition based on a full-time schedule is: $126,000.00 - $242,000.00.