Day: August 24, 2025

• Verizon is hiring hundreds of tech workers as the telecom giant goes high-tech.
• For example, a software developer can make a base salary of around $222,000, per filings.
• Work visa data shows how much the company pays for roles in software, data, and management.

Verizon is one of the largest wireless phone providers in the US, and the telecom giant was early to roll out fiber optic networks for ultrafast internet.

But competition has heated up in recent years, in the form of rivals AT&T and T-Mobile and a growing list of smaller wireless providers offering bargain prices and celebrity endorsements.

CEO Hans Vestberg said on a July earnings call that the company is ahead of schedule in rolling out an upgrade to its wireless network and expanding its fiber network. The company also reported reaching a milestone of more than 5 million fixed wireless subscribers.

The improvements come at a time when networks of all kinds are experiencing higher demands from streaming, gaming content, and the rise of AI.

“As AI transitions from centralized training to widespread real-time application, compute power at the network edge becomes essential,” Vestberg said.

Verizon is hiring hundreds of tech workers across a range of roles to build and maintain a cutting-edge network, and salary data show what the company is paying them.

Company filings with the US Department of Labor show Verizon sought to hire 332 workers through the US H-1B visa program in the first three quarters of this reporting year, largely in software development, IT, and network engineering. That number is up from about 200 for the same period during the prior two years.

By comparison, AT&T looked to hire more than 345 workers H-1B program in the first half of this year.

This publicly available work visa data — which companies are required to disclose — only refers to foreign hires and doesn’t include equity or other benefits that employees may receive in addition to their base pay.

Still, the reported pay rates are benchmarked against industry averages for US workers. That can shed light on how much employees earn in certain roles and where a company is looking to grow.

Verizon lists roughly 1,400 open full-time jobs on its careers website as of August 21, with 145 openings for corporate and technology roles.

In the H-1B data, most of the positions are based in Texas, New Jersey, or Florida, with additional roles in several other states.

Here’s a deeper look at some of the jobs:

Data scientists can earn $187,000

Data Scientist: $141,170

Senior Manager, Data Science: $143,000 to $155,045

Senior Engineer, AI Science: $141,463 to $146,061

Principal Engineer, AI Science: $157,213 to $170,000

Principal Engineer, Data Architecture: $187,460

IT project managers can earn $210,000

Senior Manager, Systems Engineering: $154,354 to $168,000

Senior Manager, Program and Project Management: $144,000

Senior Manager, Product Development: $153,675 to $171,991

Senior Manager, Product Strategy: $180,000

Senior Director, Operations Support: $210,398

Software developers can earn around $222,000

Senior Engineer, Full Stack: $116,920 to $164,992

Senior Engineer, Software Development: $122,767 to $164,029

Senior Engineer, Systems Engineering: $142,370 to $150,119

Principal Engineer, Full Stack: $122,252 to $176,800

Principal Engineer, Software Development: $133,932 to $221,974

Senior directors can make $291,000

Senior Director, Site Reliability Engineering: $175,000

Senior Director, Data Architecture: $192,400

Senior Director, Operations Support: $210,398

Senior Director, Business Strategy: $291,284

• AI has helped Ancestry streamline its operations.
• CTO Sriram Thiagarajan said its in-house AI tech cut the time needed to scan public records.
• Ancestry is beta testing a new AI feature called Audio Stories.

To say Ancestry’s database is vast would be an understatement.

“We’ve collected over 65 billion records across 80-plus countries,” Sriram Thiagarajan, the company’s chief technology officer and executive vice president of product and technology, told Business Insider. “Just to give a scale, that’s about 10,000 terabytes of data on our platform that we use to provide discoveries to our users.”

The Utah-based genealogy company, founded in 1983, collects records to help people unearth their family roots.

Those records include birth, death, marriage, census, military, land, immigration, and newspapers. Ancestry, which also offers consumer DNA test kits, collaborates with institutions like the National Archives and Records Administration to collect that data.

There’s a daunting caveat with a trove that size, though: organizing it.

Thiagarajan said Ancestry is leveraging AI and machine learning to make the Herculean task easier.

Streamlining with computer vision

When he joined Ancestry’s team in 2017, Thiagarajan said the company had just begun exploring AI and machine learning.

“We were trying to figure out an effective and efficient way to digitize content that we acquire from around the world,” Thiagarajan said.

Ancestry used to scan the records, then outsource operations to manually index and key relevant fields. That information was uploaded into Ancestry’s database before software programs established relationships between people, locations, or other categories.

“About 15 or 20 years ago, when we digitized the 1940 census, it took us about nine months to do it in a manual way at 10 times the cost,” Thiagarajan said.

That sent the Ancestry team searching for answers.

“We said, ‘Why don’t we apply computer vision AI techniques to automatically digitize content without manual intervention?’ Thiagarajan said. “Fast forward to the 2021 timeframe, we used our own proprietary handwriting recognition computer vision technologies, and we compressed the time to market to under nine days from nine months at a fraction of the cost.”

Thiagarajan said Ancestry has since expanded that technology to process other record types, but said humans still review AI results “as needed.”

“We’ve built some automated controls and systems that certainly reduce the amount of time we need to spend checking,” he said. “We want to be extra careful in making sure that what we produce using AI is grounded in truth. Grounded in facts.”

Thiagarajan added that the “extent to which we do it now versus a couple of years ago has certainly improved.”

“At the end of the day, when consumers come to our platform looking for stories about their ancestors, we want to connect them with the records we find,” he said.

Ancestry is beta testing a new AI feature

In addition to implementing AI into the backend, Ancestry has deployed several features for users, including its handwriting recognition tool. It began testing an AI assistant in 2024.

More recently, Thiagarajan told Business Insider that Ancestry began beta testing an AI-powered feature called Audio Stories that allows users to turn records into a narrative audio.

“Our AI can understand the context between the printed material, the image, and the handwritten narrative, and tie it all together into a story,” Thiagarajan said.

Although there’s no official launch date for Audio Stories yet, Ancestry is already thinking above and beyond audio.

“Down the road, we want to be able to add sight, sound, motion, and video storytelling,” Thiagarajan said.

Kyiv – Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney arrived in Ukraine on Sunday to commemorate Ukrainian Independence Day as global leaders intensify calls for peace in the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia, reports 24brussels.

“On this Ukrainian Independence Day, and at this critical moment in their nation’s history, Canada is stepping up our support and our efforts towards a just and lasting peace for Ukraine,”

Carney made this statement on social media upon his arrival in Kyiv.

He is expected to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, revealing further details of the new $2 billion aid package Canada announced during the G7 Summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, in June. Zelenskyy invited Carney as a special guest to mark Ukraine’s Independence Day.

Canada is part of a coalition of approximately 30 nations, led by France and Britain, which are committed to supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression. This coalition is advocating for robust security guarantees should a peace agreement be reached with Russia, with some member states dispatching troops to uphold these terms.

Is Canada prepared to send troops if peace is reached?

A senior Canadian government official, speaking on background during a briefing, indicated that Canada is ready to participate in troop deployments if the coalition approves. This follows Carney’s remarks made on August 22, where he underscored the importance of training and equipping Ukrainian forces.

Canadian troops are also involved in Europe under Operation Unifier, a mission initiated after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, aimed at training Ukrainian armed forces.

What is the true scale of Canada’s financial aid?

Canada’s total assistance in the Russia-Ukraine war is reported to be around $22 billion, primarily in loans, according to Ottawa. This figure contrasts with an independent estimate by the Kiel Group, which suggests the amount is closer to $19.7 billion.

Additionally, Canada plays a significant role in humanitarian efforts, offering assistance to resettled Ukrainian children abducted by Russia, enhancing maternal health access, and supporting landmine detection and clearance operations.

When did former Canadian PM Justin Trudeau last visit Ukraine before Carney?

The last visit by a Canadian Prime Minister to Ukraine before Carney was on February 24, 2024, when former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau completed his third annual trip since the escalation of the war in 2022. During that visit, Trudeau met with President Zelenskyy and other world leaders, announcing over $3 billion in military and financial support to Ukraine.