AI Operations Director

Lumen is the trusted network for the AI‑powered world, connecting people, data, and applications through our expansive fiber network and connected ecosystem. We enable secure, high‑performance connectivity across cloud, edge, and AI workloads for enterprises, governments, and communities.

At Lumen, you'll work on infrastructure customers rely on today and build for what's next, where performance, security, and resilience matter.

This is a high accountability environment where bold ideas drive real innovation for our customers, partners, and industry. The work is challenging, expectations are clear, and trust is built into how we operate. If you're ready to take ownership, deliver meaningful impact, and help shape the future of AI‑ready connectivity, join us today.

** The Role*
* We are seeking an AI Operations Director, to serve as a strategic operator for the AI Office, helping translate Lumen's AI ambition into clear priorities, operating mechanisms, executive alignment, and measurable enterprise impact. Reporting to the Chief AI Officer, this role will run the AI Office operating system - connecting strategy, portfolio discipline, governance forums, executive communications, stakeholder alignment, and follow-through across the enterprise AI ecosystem.  

This person will help ensure the organization is focused on the right priorities, decisions are made with clarity and speed, and leaders have the visibility needed to accelerate value realization.

Working closely with AI strategy, technology, and business stakeholders, this person will bring structure to complexity, improve transparency across the portfolio, and accelerate value realization across the portfolio. They will also ensure the execution model is clear and effective so the organization can move with speed, focus, and alignment.

This is a high-impact role connecting strategy to results through structure, governance, and operating cadence.  We need a strategic thinker and versatile operator who can move fluidly between executive narrative, decision framing, portfolio orchestration and insight, operating cadence, stakeholder alignment, and execution discipline.

** The Main Responsibilities*
* + Partner closely with the Chief AI Officer to translate strategy into clear priorities, operating mechanisms, action plans, and executive narratives

+ Serve as a strategic thought partner on where to invest, scale, pause, or stop across the AI portfolio

+ Identify emerging gaps, risks, and opportunities across the AI ecosystem, and proactively drive the work needed to maintain clarity, momentum, and impact

+ Support the AI Office as an enterprise leadership function, ensuring strategy, portfolio, governance, communications and execution stay connected

+ Maintain a clear enterprise view of AI initiatives, including ownership, maturity, dependencies, sequencing considerations, execution risk, and value potential

+ Ensure consistency in how initiatives are defined, tracked, and reported to enable clear, comparable visibility across the portfolio

+ Identify and surface early indicators of fragmentation, duplication, or misalignment across initiatives

+ Support prioritization decisions by synthesizing business, product, technical, and organizational signals into clear executive recommendations

+ Design and manage the AI Office operating cadence, including portfolio reviews, executive updates, status reporting, and decision forums

+ Stand up and manage portfolio governance, success metrics, and executive reporting to track performance, inform stage-gate decisions, and measure business impact and AI value realization

+ Enable faster, higher-quality decisions by framing tradeoffs, clarifying implications, and driving alignment across stakeholders

+ Act as a central connector across AI, Product, Engineering, HR, Legal, and business teams to ensure alignment and accountability

+ Clarify ownership, sequencing, and interdependencies to improve execution

+ Remove structural barriers that slow progress by identifying cross-portfolio dependencies, decision bottlenecks, and areas of role confusion

+ Build strong stakeholder relationships to drive accountability, adoption, and…