Senior AI/ML Engineer - AI Live Operations

Verizon; Basking Ridge (NJ); Hybrid; USD 112,000 - 194,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) savings plan

Paid time off & holidays

Parental leave

Job summary

Verizon is seeking a Senior AI/ML Engineer - AI Live Operations to apply advanced data science, system orchestration, and software engineering to maintain stability and safety of deployed AI models. You will contribute to the Live Operations team handling real-world data and production traffic.

The role supports a multi-year journey to industrialize AI across Verizon, with production-scale inferences and collaboration across cloud, on-premises, and edge environments.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or four or more years of work experience.
• Four or more years of relevant experience in data science, software, or operations.
• Master's degree in CS/Data Science/Engineering is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain real-time monitoring and observability pipelines for large language models.
• Monitor production model behavior for data drift and degradation.
• Implement automated evaluation loops using user feedback and telemetry.
• Deploy real-time safety filters and content moderation.
• Integrate fallback systems to preserve user experience.
• Develop CI/CD pipelines to retrain and release models with no downtime.
• Resolve production model incidents as senior escalation contact.
• Collaborate with platform architects and data science teams to scale backend architectures across cloud, on-premises, and edge networks.
• Partner with peers to ensure secure, ethical AI standards and code reviews.

Skills

Python

Java

C++

Data structures

Cloud platforms

Education

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree (CS/Math/EE)

Tools

Airflow

Kubeflow

MLflow

Kafka

Spark

AWS

Azure

GCP

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...

As a Senior AI/ML Engineer - AI Live Operations, you will apply your advanced technical expertise in data science, system orchestration, and software engineering to maintain the stability, safety, and efficiency of our deployed artificial intelligence models. You will be a key individual contributor within the Live Operations team, taking responsibility for the health of machine learning systems once they are exposed to real-world datasets and production traffic.

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 decisions and business processes across the company. At over one hundred thirty billion dollars in annual revenue, this is a pioneering opportunity to build and scale production AI systems in the telecommunications industry. With our leadership in bringing 5G network nationwide, you will help us transition from millions of automated predictions to trillions of real-time inferences.

In this role, your responsibilities will include:

• Building and maintaining real-time monitoring and observability pipelines to track system throughput, latency, and token consumption costs for large language models.
• Monitoring production model behavior to identify data drift and model degradation, ensuring our systems maintain high predictive accuracy over time.
• Implementing automated continuous evaluation loops that capture user feedback and ground-truth telemetry to dynamically assess performance.
• Deploying real-time safety filters, system guardrails, and input/output moderators to mitigate model hallucinations and prevent inappropriate content generation.
• Integrating robust fallback systems, including routing failures to traditional rule-based software systems or human queues, to preserve end-user experience.
• Developing automated continuous integration and continuous deployment pipelines to retrain, validate, and seamlessly release updated models without downtime.
• Resolving production model incidents as a senior escalation contact, diagnosing issues with live models, and shipping immediate hotfixes or prompt adjustments.
• Collaborating with platform architects and core data science teams to scale backend architectures across cloud, on-premises, and edge network infrastructures.
• Partnering with peer engineering and development teams to foster technical alignment, conduct code reviews, and champion secure, ethical AI standards.

What we’re looking for...

You are a highly skilled engineer who excels in the intersection of data science, software development, and operations. You understand that machine learning models are not static, and you thrive on solving the complex, real-time challenges that occur once algorithms meet actual users. You are a self-starter who values precision, system resilience, and clean, scalable code. You enjoy mentoring junior team members and sharing technical knowledge across the larger engineering community.

You'll need to have:

• Bachelor's degree or four or more years of work experience.
• Four or more years of relevant experience required, demonstrated through one or a combination of work and/or military experience, or specialized training.

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

• Master's degree in computer science, data science, electrical engineering, mathematics, or another highly technical discipline.
• Extensive hands-on experience deploying, monitoring, and debugging complex machine learning or deep learning models in large-scale production environments.
• Practical familiarity with MLOps frameworks and automated pipeline tools, including Airflow, Kubeflow, or MLflow.
• Advanced programming expertise in Python, Java, or C++, with a strong grasp of data structures and cloud systems such as AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure.
• Deep experience developing safety guardrail middleware, system monitoring dashboards, and telemetry systems for Generative AI applications.
• Knowledge of distributed compute architectures, database design, and real-time streaming technologies such as Kafka or Spark.

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: $111,500.00 - $194,000.00.