Chief Technologist

About Lumen

Lumen connects the world. We are igniting business growth by connecting people, data and applications — quickly, securely, and effortlessly. Together, we are building a culture and company from the people up — committed to teamwork, trust and transparency. People power progress.

We are seeking a visionary, hands on Chief Technologist to drive the next generation of Lumen’s Digital Platform, AI Platform, Data ecosystem, and AI capabilities. This role is ideal for a distinguished technologist with a proven track record of leading large scale platform transformations, modernizing architectures, and driving AI first engineering across complex global organizations.

The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in cloud platforms, distributed systems, data architecture, and Agentic/Generative AI, combined with the leadership needed to shape company wide architectural standards, influence senior stakeholders, mentor engineering leaders, interface with customers, and guide strategic decision making.

• Own and evolve the end to end software architecture for the Lumen Digital Platform, ensuring world class customer experience, performance, resilience, and compliance.
• Architect systems that scale to global enterprise workloads and unify disparate cloud, networking, compute, and storage services.
• Lead senior architect forums, drive architectural governance, and define cross functional patterns, blueprints, and standards.
• Enable platform modernization by guiding transitions to cloud native, microservices based, and AI augmented engineering practices.

• Define and drive the enterprise Data Architecture roadmap, including the adoption and optimization of platforms such as Databricks, Palantir, and next generation data lake house technologies.
• Lead migration from legacy data systems to modern, scalable, secure data platforms.
• Architect data flows for both traditional data processing pipelines and emerging AI/ML workflows.
• Ensure data platforms meet the highest standards of security, governance, and operational excellence.

• Lead the design and deployment of AI architecture supporting both internal engineering productivity and customer facing intelligent experiences.
• Drive the integration of Agentic AI, generative models, and AI first workflows into the company’s operational and product ecosystems, while also being a champion for this in the external industry.
• Partner with AI governance and cross functional teams to promote rapid, safe, and ethical AI adoption across the enterprise.
• Evaluate new AI technologies, select strategic partners, and define reference architectures for AI systems.

• Own and evolve the enterprise API Architecture strategy and roadmap, including platform direction, standards, and governance mechanisms that scale across multiple lines of business.
• Serve as a senior architecture executive who drives consistency, standards, and best practices across engineering leadership and stakeholder groups.
• Lead the team that sets APR standards, enabling compliance and ensuring APIs align with enterprise security and Dev Sec Ops  requirements.

• 15 years of experience in software architecture, cloud platforms, API, or distributed systems engineering.
• 10 years of proven leadership experience architecting large scale cloud platforms or operating systems.
• Deep expertise in modern data architecture, data lake/lake house patterns, pipeline design, and platform modernization.
• Hands on architecture experience with AI systems, generative AI frameworks, or intelligent platform capabilities.

• Distributed systems, cloud native architectures, platform engineering experience/expertise.
• Agentic AI, ML platform design, model integration experience/expertise.
• Data architecture (Databricks, Palantir, transformations).
• Networking systems (as applicable for platform depth).
• Ability to translate business requirements into scalable, market leading architectures.

• Proven track record influencing CTO level and executive…