Principal Engineer- Network Engineering

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.

Position Overview

The Global Technical Facilities Planning group is responsible for leading the strategic planning, development, and enhancement of Verizon Technical sites in support of network growth across next-generation architectures. We accomplish this by partnering closely with Network Equipment owners, Standards, Implementation, and Technology teams to develop, assess, and optimize PSC capacity loads while integrating Artificial Intelligence, machine learning automation, and intelligent bot-driven workflows that dramatically accelerate decision-making and reduce manual effort across our nationwide portfolio.

What You'll Be Doing...

As a Principal Engineer, you will be tasked with developing resolutions to complex problems that require the frequent use of creativity. Additionally, you will also be conducting analysis of situations or data requiring an in-depth evaluation of variable factors and exercising judgment in selecting methods, techniques and evaluation criteria for obtaining results.

• Providing mentoring to other team members on networking, application design, engineering and automation while acting as the final escalation point to support production service issues in concert with application, operational, and triage teams.

• Leading performance meetings with the vendor, planning and maintenance engineering and creating detailed project plans. 

• Providing input on status calls with teams across several organizations.

• Finishing projects independently and meeting tight timelines without impacting critical services.

• Developing excellent working relationships with and working as a partner with other departments and vendors with the purpose developing best practices for engineering and operations.

Technical Facilities Planner

• Develop, maintain, assess, and calculate PSC (Power, Space, and Cooling) capacity loads across a national portfolio of sites to promptly approve network gear installation.

• Leverage 1-, 3-, and 5-year Power, Space, and Cooling capacity and utilization forecasts to model future facility exhaust, informing build and decommission plans aligned to the network roadmaps

• Plan and design short- and long-term equipment layouts of technical facilities based on Verizon Standards; produce AutoCAD space-planning deliverables for internal customers.

• Manage DC power plants, generators, and HVAC systems; perform AC/DC electrical analysis including rectifiers, batteries, BDFBs/PDFs, and generator capacity calculations.

• Participate market reviews and/or site visits to monitor implementation progress and ensure PSC compliance.

• Identify, lead, and implement PSC solutions involving construction, modification, or decommissioning of equipment based on fiduciary and network priorities.

• Partner with Technical Facilities Engineer and Implementation team on capacity solutions including construction design, scope, vendor management, bidding, permitting, and capital budget requests.

• Maintain adequate build-ahead margins with close attention to technology transformation initiatives (e.g., iEN, OpenRAN, vRAN, edge compute).

AI Development, Automation & Bot Engineering

• Design, develop, and deploy AI-powered bots and automated agents that streamline PSC capacity workflows, data ingestion pipelines, and reporting cycles across UNIX-based environments.

• Build and fine-tune large language model (LLM) integrations (e.g., Claude, GPT-4, Gemini) using prompt engineering, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and function/tool-calling frameworks to automate analysis and generate leadership-ready readouts.

• Develop agentic AI workflows using frameworks to orchestrate multi-step capacity planning tasks end-to-end with minimal human intervention.

• Create Python-based automation scripts, ETL pipelines, and REST/GraphQL API integrations to pull data from COEP, 1ERP/NSAP/vSAP, dcTrack, Canvas, Clarity, and other network management systems into unified analytical models, leveraging SQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, and Hadoop DFS for data storage and processing.

• Engineer Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions to replace high-volume, repetitive manual tasks across PSC planning workflows.

• Design and maintain vector databases and semantic search capabilities to enable intelligent retrieval of historical capacity data, site records, and engineering standards.

• Develop and deploy chatbot interfaces (Teams, web-based) that allow non-technical stakeholders to query PSC capacity data using natural language.

• Implement MLOps practices: model versioning, automated retraining pipelines, performance monitoring, and drift detection for predictive capacity models using AWS, Azure, and Kubernetes, with version control managed through Git/SVN.

• Produce machine learning forecasting models (regression, time-series, ensemble methods) to predict power/cooling exhaust dates with quantified confidence intervals.

• Partner with TIES teams to define AI/automation roadmaps, author technical user stories, and participate in Agile/Scrum ceremonies as a subject-matter expert.

Data Analytics, Dashboards & Reporting

• Build interactive dashboards in Looker and Tableau, surfacing real-time PSC utilization, risk heat maps, and forecast accuracy KPIs.

• Develop KPIs with planning and construction teams to deliver reporting on forecasting accuracy and capacity program health.

• Prepare and deliver polished executive readouts to all audience levels, including senior and C-suite leadership, translating complex data into clear strategic narratives.

• Partner with planning organizations and all relevant stakeholders to identify process improvement opportunities and cost-savings solutions.

Where You'll Be Working...

This is a hybrid role with a defined work location that includes both remote work and assigned office days as set by the manager. This role can be located in any valid Verizon location.

What We're Looking For...

We are looking for a highly energetic, self-starting Principal Engineer to join a seasoned team of PSC professionals. This role will transform planning processes by embedding AI and automation into the core of our capacity management lifecycle. You are organized, data-driven, highly collaborative, strategically minded, and passionate about applying emerging technology to hard operational problems.

You'll Need to Have

• Bachelor's degree or four or more years of equivalent work experience.

• Six or more years of relevant work experience (technical facilities planning, facility engineering, Network Systems or a related technical discipline), demonstrated through one or a combination of work and/or military experience, or specialized training.

• Power, Space, and Cooling design and/or construction experience in a telecommunications or data center environment.

• Experience with Python for data analysis, automation, and model development.

• Hands-on experience integrating or building with LLM APIs (Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, or equivalent) including prompt engineering and tool/function calling.

• Experience building automated workflows, bots, or scripts that replace or augment manual operational processes.

• Experience collecting, analyzing, and presenting complex data; proficiency with SQL, Oracle, and SQL Server for data modeling, and visualization tools including Looker and Tableau.

• Experience leading through influence in a cross-functional team environment across engineering, IT, and operations.

• Experience in presentation and communication skills with a proven ability to influence and present to all levels of the organization.

• Basic understanding of electrical systems, DC power design, and telecommunications network architecture.

Even Better if You Have One or More of the Following

• Proficiency with agentic AI frameworks, with development experience in Python and deployment on AWS and Azure.

• Experience with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), vector databases including PostgreSQL with pgvector, and semantic search.

• Robotic Process Automation (RPA) experience using custom Python-based automation.

• MLOps experience: deploying and monitoring ML models in production on AWS and Azure using Kubernetes for orchestration and Git/SVN for version control.

• Experience with cloud platforms, specifically AWS and Azure, for hosting AI/ML workloads, APIs, and data pipelines.

• REST API design and consumption; experience building internal tool backends using Python, Java, or JavaScript in UNIX-based environments.

• AutoCAD experience for Central Office and technical facility space planning.

• Familiarity with systems including 1PSC- UNO, NPP, dcTrack, DRAAS, AutoCAD, CCP, Canvas, Clarity, vSAP GUI, ERP-SAP Portal.

• Electrical, Mechanical, or Civil Engineering degree.

• Experience with Verizon network architecture

• Project Management certification (PMP, PgMP) or Agile/Scrum certification (CSM, SAFe).

• Experience developing user stories, defining acceptance criteria, and participating in sprint ceremonies as a technical lead.

• Proven track record of identifying and driving cross-functional cost, quality, and time improvement initiatives with measurable results.

• Strong negotiation and written communication skills for influencing multiple technical and non-technical organizations.

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 Hours40

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: $107,000.00 - $205,000.00.

The annual salary range for the Colorado location(s) listed on this job requisition based on a full-time schedule is: $118,000.00 - $205,000.00.

The annual salary range for the Illinois location(s) listed on this job requisition based on a full-time schedule is: $118,000.00 - $205,000.00.