Senior AI Practitioner New

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The Senior AI Practitioner is responsible for defining and steering the AI strategy for telecommunications network management, working closely with the AI Architect to establish the target AI implementation architecture and a phased roadmap toward achieving full autonomy in network operations, aligned with TM Forum Autonomous Network Level 4 and Level 5.

A core aspect of the role is active engagement with systems analysts and development teams across the organization, ensuring that AI-related design, implementation, and operational practices are consistent, scalable, and aligned with the agreed strategic and architectural direction.

This is a senior strategic and technical leadership role, shaping how AI is applied coherently across products, platforms, and domains rather than delivering isolated solutions.

What you will Do

AI Strategy & Vision

Work with the architecture team to define and maintain the AI strategy for network management and autonomy, aligned with business, operational, and transformation objectives

Establish common AI capability principles and patterns applicable across RAN, Transport, Core, and Cloud management domains.

Target AI Architecture Definition

Co-own the target AI implementation architecture with the AI Architect, ensuring: Consistent AI control-loop patterns and decision hierarchies

Clear separation of concerns between data, intelligence, decisioning, and execution layers

Alignment with OSS, orchestration, and assurance architectures

Promote architectural alignment with: Cloud-native and microservices principles

Open standards and interfaces (TMF Open APIs, 3GPP, ETSI) as well as de facto open source implementations

Multi-vendor and disaggregated environments, including Open RAN

Roadmap & Transformation Planning

Develop a multi-year roadmap from current-state automation to intent-driven, self-managing networks

Decompose strategic objectives into actionable, incremental delivery milestones.

Balance near-term operational benefits with long-term architectural sustainability.

Development Team Engagement & Alignment

Act as a primary AI strategy and architecture liaison between product management, central architecture functions across Ericsson and multiple distributed development teams

Drive best practices and consistency across teams, including: Common AI design patterns and reference architectures

Shared approaches to closed-loop control, explainability, and confidence scoring

Reusable AI components, services, and data abstractions

Provide architectural guidance and design review to ensure: Solutions align with the target AI architecture and autonomy roadmap

Duplication and fragmentation are avoided

AI capabilities evolve coherently across the organization

Influence ways of working without direct line authority, using technical credibility and collaboration.

Autonomous Network Use Case Enablement

Support and shape key AI-driven network management use cases, such as: Closed-loop fault management and self-healing

Predictive performance and capacity optimization

Energy efficiency and sustainability automation

Experience- and SLA-driven assurance

Ensure use cases are designed for safe, scalable autonomy at L4/L5, including: Clear control boundaries (human-on-the-loop vs autonomous)

Operational trust, observability, guardrails and rollback mechanisms

Governance, Trust & Operational Readiness

Define and align principles for: AI governance in autonomous decision-making

Explainability, auditability, and risk management

Progressive reduction of manual intervention

Support organizational readiness for operating and trusting autonomous systems at scale.

The Skills You will Bring

AI/ML & control-loop engineering

Strong background in AI/ML for network automation (closed-loop control, self-healing, predictive optimisation, SLA-driven assurance).

Experience designing AI control loops, decision hierarchies, confidence scoring and explainability.

Knowledge of AI governance, risk, observability, guardrails and rollback mechanisms.

Architecture & technical leadership

Proven experience defining target architectures: clear separation of data, intelligence, decision and execution layers.

Strong grounding in cloud-native, microservices architectures, APIs and distributed systems.

Familiarity with open standards and interfaces (e.g. TMF Open APIs, 3GPP, ETSI) and multi-vendor / Open RAN environments.

Strategy, roadmapping & transformation

Track record of building multi-year roadmaps from current automation to intent-driven, self-managing networks.

Ability to decompose strategy into incremental, deliverable milestones, balancing quick wins and long-term architecture.

Cross-team influence and collaboration

Experience acting as a bridge between product management, central architecture and multiple dev teams.

Ability to standardise patterns and best practices (reference architectures, reusable components, shared data abstractions).

Strong stakeholder management and influencing without line authority, using technical credibility and collaboration.

Governance, trust & operational readiness

Experience defining AI governance principles (explainability, auditability, risk management).

Background in operationalising AI at scale: readiness of organisations, processes and tools to trust autonomous decisions.

Senior-level experience in AI/ML + telecom/networking, ideally in product/platform or architecture roles rather than isolated PoCs.

Excellent communication skills to align diverse stakeholders around a coherent AI strategy and architecture.

Telecom network & domain expertise

Deep understanding of telecom network management across RAN, Transport, Core and Cloud domains.

Experience with OSS, orchestration and assurance architectures.

Familiarity with TM Forum Autonomous Networks (L4/L5) and related autonomy concepts.

What we offer

This is a hybrid position (3 days per week on site) based at our Ireland Athlone Office. More information about Ericsson Athlone: VIDEO: Working at Ericsson Athlone

A healthy work-life balance (flexible hours, maternity/paternity and parental leave).

25 days annual leave + plus 2 company days, family-friendly work environment!

Multifaceted sports and social club which hosts many sporting (e.g. golf, football, swimming, tennis) and social (e.g. gaming, theatre, movie, nights out) activities.

Expand your horizons in a rich multicultural environment and collaborate with colleagues from all over the globe.

Clearly defined career paths improved with inhouse training and financial support for external study.

Opportunities to travel around the world and work directly with our customers.

Pension scheme, health insurance, company doctor, life cover and sick pay/income continuance plan.

Tax saver commuter/bike to work scheme.

What happens once you apply?Click Here to find all you need to know about what our typical hiring process looks like.We encourage you to consider applying to jobs where you might not meet all the criteria. We recognize that we all have transferrable skills, and we can support you with the skills that you need to develop.Encouraging a diverse and inclusive organization is core to our values at Ericsson, that's why we champion it in everything we do. We truly believe that by collaborating with people with different experiences we drive innovation, which is essential for our future growth. We encourage people from all backgrounds to apply and realize their full potential as part of our Ericsson team. Ericsson is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. learn more.

Primary country and city: Ireland (IE) || Athlone