Vice President, Technology Solutions - Cloud and AI (Field CTO/OCTO)

Are you passionate about the future of experience driven platforms for Service Providers, changing communities and businesses, leveraging agentic AI for telecommunications, leading the product strategy for a rapidly growing $600M business? Our award-winning Revenue Edge SmartLife managed services deliver end-to-end solutions spanning hardware, software, and cloud components that together enable a fully managed broadband experience. This allows BSPs to target each segment with streamlined capital investment, lean operations, and targeted engagement.

Calix is seeking a visionary Vice President, Technology Solutions - Cloud and AI (Field CTO/OCTO) to serve as our primary external evangelist and internal technical strategist. In this high-impact role, you will bridge the gap between complex technological innovation and market reality. You will be the technical face of the company, guiding Tier 1, 2, and 3 Broadband Service Providers (BSPs) through their Cloud Journey and AI transformation. This critical leadership role is responsible for driving architecture, adoption and innovation of next-generation AI Agents, Multi-tenant and Private cloud applications for our Global customer base.

This is a strategic, highly influential position for an executive who understands Cloud and AI technology and leverages data and automation to treat engineering as a highly optimized manufacturing pipeline.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Technical Strategy & Innovation

• Evangelize the technical vision for our AI-first SaaS portfolio, focusing on Generative AI, Agentic Workflows, and Private Cloud architectures.
• Assist Product teams in conceptualizing the design of AI Agents capable of autonomous task execution for BSP operations (e.g., customer support automation, network diagnostics, predictive maintenance).
• Stay Ahead of the Curve: Relentlessly research emerging trends (e.g., Small Language Models, Multi-modal AI) to ensure our stack remains superior to the competition.
• Proactively identify risks, resolve issues, and implement solutions in collaboration with both Calix and external teams.
• You must bring business and technical acumen, executive presence in front of customers, be a strong communicator inside and outside your organization, prioritizing a team mindset and have an effective cross-functional way of working.
• Stay ahead of market trends in Generative AI, Responsible AI, and emerging AI use cases across sectors. Advise internal stakeholders on how evolving technologies (e.g. vector databases, RAG pipelines, prompt engineering) can drive value.

2. Field Engineering & Evangelism

• Customer Advisory: Act as a trusted technical advisor to C-Level executives at Tier 1 (National), Tier 2 (Regional), and Tier 3 (Local) BSPs, helping them map their business goals to our technology.
• Thought Leadership: Represent the company at major industry conferences, webinars, and panels. Publish white papers and technical blogs on the intersection of Connectivity, Cloud, and AI.
• Partner with the Sales organization to close complex, high-value deals by performing deep-dive architectural workshops and "Art of the Possible" demos.
• Lead the technical response for AI-related RFPs, RFIs, and proposals, including solution overviews, technical narratives, architecture diagrams.

3. Product & Engineering Alignment

• Review market feedback and BSP pain points into scalable, cloud-based AI solutions that address both technical feasibility and business impact.
• Conduct discovery workshops and assessments to define business requirements and align them with AI use cases.
• Evangelize end-to-end AI/ML solutions including model design, data pipelines, MLOps, and platform integration
• Translate customer requirements into scalable, cloud-based AI architectures that address both technical feasibility and business impact.
• Platform Optimization: Guide the selection of underlying infrastructure, specifically advocating for and optimizing usage of Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Vertex AI services.
•  Build proof-of-concepts (PoCs) or demos to validate solution approaches and inspire client confidence. Showcase AI capabilities using Calix’s tools.

Qualifications:

• 15+ years of progressive experience in Engineering Leadership, with a significant portion dedicated to a blend of technical engineering/development and customer-facing solution architecture.
• 10+ years of experience at the Director or VP level working with globally distributed teams and highly complex Product Development environments.
• BSP/Telco Industry Knowledge: Proven track record working with or for Broadband Service Providers. You understand the difference in operational scale between a Tier 1 carrier and a Tier 3 rural provider.
• Executive Presence: Ability to command a room, whiteboard complex concepts on the fly, and communicate ROI to non-technical stakeholders.
• Builder Mindset: You must be willing to get your hands dirty. You are a leader who can still code, prototype, or architect a proof-of-concept when necessary.
• Domain Expertise: Proven track record with scalable Cloud Architectures (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and complex enterprise Networking environments.
• Cultural Leader: A proven Evangelist and champion for change, capable of instilling an Innovation Mindset across engineering organizations.
• Strong understanding of microservices, and Cloud Infrastructure Management. 
• Proven track record in driving product innovation and creating disruptive solutions.