Sr Principal Architect: Autonomous Networks & Agentic AI

AT&T; Bothell (WA); On-site; USD 209,000 - 313,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/Dental/Vision coverage

401(k) plan

Tuition reimbursement program

Paid Parental Leave

Paid Caregiver Leave

Sick leave benefits

Adoption Reimbursement

Disability Benefits

Life Insurance

Supplemental benefit programs

Employee Assistance Programs (EAP)

Wellness programs

Employee discounts up to 50% on AT&T,

Job summary

AT&T is seeking a Sr Principal Member of Technical Staff in Bothell to lead the architecture and delivery of autonomous network capabilities for Mobile Core. You will drive intent-driven architectures and define reference architectures for agentic network operations, ensuring self-healing, real-time telemetry, and AI-enabled automation across complex telecom environments.

The role combines architecture, software engineering, AI/ML, telecom standards, and large-scale operations.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in telecommunications network architecture and automation.
• Strong understanding of 5G Standalone Core architecture, network functions, protocols, lifecycle management, configuration management, and operational workflows.
• Hands-on experience designing agentic AI and closed-loop automation systems, including LLM-based agents, tool integration, guardrails, evaluation, and governance.

Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture and engineering of Autonomous Network capabilities for AT&T's Mobile Core, advancing use cases across TM Forum AN Levels 1–5.
• Define intent-driven architectures that translate business and operational intent into policies, decisions, and automated network actions.
• Establish the reference architecture for agentic network operations, including how AI agents interact with network functions, OSS platforms, observability systems, APIs, and automation tools.
• Design and deploy closed-loop, self-healing systems capable of detecting network conditions, determining corrective actions, executing changes, and validating outcomes.
• Architect real-time telemetry, topology, event, and network-data pipelines that provide autonomous systems with accurate network state.
• Apply network analytics and digital twins to predict issues, simulate network behavior, and validate automated actions before production deployment.
• Develop and operationalize LLM/AI agents, including model selection, tuning, evaluation, tool integration, orchestration, and lifecycle management.
• Build AI-assisted testing and automation frameworks that accelerate certification, improve defect detection, and increase deployment confidence.
• Establish responsible automation controls through policy-as-code, human-in-the-loop approvals, blast-radius limits, automated rollback, explainability, and auditability.
• Design security controls for agentic environments, including agent identity, least-privilege access, token-based authentication, secrets management, credential lifecycle management, and protections against prompt injection and tool misuse.
• Perform deep technical troubleshooting and root cause analysis using logs, network KPIs, telemetry, and packet-level diagnostics.
• Define and measure autonomy outcomes including touchless operations, MTTD/MTTR, false-positive rates, and automated-change success.
• Influence supplier roadmaps so network functions provide automation-ready APIs, telemetry, and control points.
• Represent AT&T in industry standards organizations including TM Forum, 3GPP SA5, and ETSI ZSM, translating emerging standards into implementable network architectures.
• Mentor engineers and establish technical direction across teams adopting AI-driven and autonomous network operations.

Skills

Telecom architecture

Automation

AIOps

Intent-driven networking

Agentic AI

LLM-based agents

Python

Go

GitOps

CI/CD

Security controls

Observability

Data pipelines

Delivery leadership

Tools

Python

Go

Job description

AT&T is seeking a Sr Principal Member of Technical Staff in Bothell to lead the architecture and delivery of autonomous network capabilities for Mobile Core. You will drive intent-driven architectures and define reference architectures for agentic network operations, ensuring self-healing, real-time telemetry, and AI-enabled automation across complex telecom environments.

The role combines architecture, software engineering, AI/ML, telecom standards, and large-scale operations.