Carrier-grade networks. Data centers and central offices at national scale. And the
commercial architecture that turns raw capacity into committed, recurring revenue.
Twenty-five years on all three sides of this market: service provider, technology
vendor, and enterprise customer. Every number below opens to its source.
35% YoY
Enterprise migration onto AI-ready NaaS at Lumen, inside 8 months, plus 75% month over month
$453M
Initial multiyear investment behind a brand-new fiber ISP, won as a single-vendor solution
4,200+
Central offices owned end to end, including power, cooling and outside plant
US 9,882,833
U.S. patent on intent-based services orchestration, granted 2018
Everyone is talking about models. Almost nobody in that conversation has ever
had to find the power, the cooling, the fiber, the floor space and the capital
to make one of them run.
I have. For 25+ years I have built the layer underneath: the central offices,
the transport networks, the managed platforms, and the commercial structures
that decide whether any of it ever pays for itself. Three carrier platform
generations, from TDM to IP to cloud-native to AI-ready fabric. I was in the
room for a $22.4B acquisition and a $5B one, assessing whether the platforms
being bought could actually carry what was promised.
What I do is translation. I take deep infrastructure and
AI-readiness and turn it into something a board can fund, a seller can sell,
and a customer can recognize as their own future. That translation is where
most infrastructure value gets lost, and it is the specific thing I am good at.
The last twelve months I have spent proving it on myself. Not advising on AI,
building with it: production systems that run my research, my content, my
pipeline and my operating cadence, every day, unattended. An executive who can
only describe AI is now a commodity. One who has shipped it is not.
"Aaron has the rare ability and technical aptitude to understand and be able to articulate those challenges with the legacy network, regulatory hurdles, and the vision for the future. His ability to provide the 10,000 foot view and a technical deep dive spanning decades of network technology innovation is uncanny."
Nathan Hostetter, Head of Sales Americas, and Aaron's client for four years · July 2018
The evidence key
Every tag on this page opens. Click one and it tells you exactly
what stands behind the claim it sits under, including a link to the document where
a document exists. Try the three below.
Backed by a public document, and the tag links to it.
What this tag means
A document you can open supports the claim, and the tag hands you the link. Press
releases, investor materials, patent records and my own LinkedIn profile all
qualify. If you cannot open the source yourself, the claim does not get this tag.
Checked by an independent third party, named on the tag.
What this tag means
An independent third party checked the claim against company sources and the tag
names who. Today that is TrueSeat.io, a candidate-verification service, which
provenance-checked my Lumen record in 2026. There is no public document I can hand
you, so it is deliberately not called verified. The distinction is the point.
My own figure, available for reference check.
What this tag means
The figure is mine, from inside the business, and no public record of it exists.
It is stated as achieved and never rounded up. It is available for reference check
on request, including the peers and reports who were in the room.
Every quantified claim below carries one of these three. Where a number is only
mine, it says so.
02 / The art of the possible
Most people sell what already exists. My job is to make what comes next feel inevitable.
Evangelizing the art of the possible is not a slide, it is a discipline, and it has a
shape. Every global operator, every enterprise, every small business is asking the same
three questions right now: how do we grow, how do we get more efficient, and what makes
us different in a market where the same technology is available to everyone. The answer
is never the technology. It is what the technology makes true.
Move one
Start at the outcome. Work backward to what must be true.
Starting from the mechanics is how teams build the wrong thing efficiently. So I
start at the far end: the outcome the business is actually trying to produce, in
their language, against their P&L. Then we back into the conditions. What has to
be true about the architecture, the commercial structure, the capital, the sequence.
Asked inside a company, that turns a room of opinions into a set of conditions you
can test. Asked of a customer, it stops being my vision and becomes theirs.
"Everything ran through one question. 'What needs to be true for this to work?'
It sounds simple. It isn't. Same question to a customer, and suddenly they're the one
telling you what good looks like. Aaron describes it back and they see their own
success in it. I stole that question from him and still use it weekly."
Terry Barbounis, who reported to Aaron directly at Lumen
Move two
Show them the capacity before they know to ask for it.
Generational disruptions are visible 12 to 18 months before the market prices them
in, but only if you are standing close enough to the infrastructure to watch the
capital move. Power applications, land, long-lead equipment, fiber routes. That is
where the future shows up first, and it shows up as a purchase order, not a headline.
At Lumen that meant positioning AI-ready capacity while the industry conversation was
still about connectivity, and winning on foresight rather than on price. Being early
is not a personality trait. It is a function of where you choose to stand.
"Aaron is one of the few who could take network and infrastructure complexity, and
turn it into an advantage for the customer. And he understood AI's
impact on capacity before most people were even asking the question."
Terry Barbounis, who reported to Aaron directly at Lumen · July 2026
Move three
Make the future concrete enough to fund.
A vision nobody can underwrite is entertainment. The job is not finished when the
customer is excited, it is finished when someone can take it to a board and get it
funded: the architecture, the commercial model, the capital plan, and the order of
operations.
At Lumen I built a physical place for exactly this. The Lumen Experience Center, an
AI-factory lab and integration bench where partner ecosystems, edge compute and
hyperscaler on-ramps were tested against the NaaS fabric, and customers walked
through their own future state in a 3D environment. It shortened decisions, because
people fund what they have already seen working.
"Aaron has a strong technology background and a well grounded strategic ability. He blends these skills to deliver actionable technology and new product plans. Aaron also has the unique ability to break complex technical issues down into simple terms to facilitate cross functional understanding and alignment."
Matt Rotter, Principal, Asbury Court Advisors · August 2016
The same discipline, three scales
Global operator
Where does capacity turn into committed revenue instead of stranded CapEx?
The infrastructure bet is already placed. The question is whether the commercial
architecture on top of it converts, or whether you have built a very expensive asset
with a spot-market business model.
Enterprise
What has to be true for our AI workloads to run where the economics work, not just where the contract already is?
Most enterprises are running tomorrow's workloads on yesterday's connectivity because
that is what was procured. Moving to a ready state is an evolution you can sequence,
not a rip and replace you have to survive.
Small business
What would it look like if the whole business were one picture, and the routine work ran itself?
Small businesses do not lack data, they lack a place where all of it is one picture.
SMB-OS is that place, a digital-first operating system built at
Kerzie.ai with AI as the plumbing rather than the product, so the owner stops reacting
and starts steering.
AI Unified Consulting is the intake and advisory arm in front of it.
Structured discovery that finds where the inefficiency and the money left on the table
actually are, then walks an owner into adoption on a crawl / walk / run plan instead of
asking them to take a leap. Advisory is what makes the operating system get adopted
rather than admired.
03 / Signature results
Four outcomes I would put my name on. Open any tag and check me.
Different companies, different decades, one pattern. Simplify the architecture until
it can move, automate what simplification exposes, then structure the commercial model
so the result recurs. Every tag below opens to show what backs the claim.
Lumen Technologies / 2025 to 2026
35% YoY / 75% MoM Enterprise migration into the AI-ready state
Moved large enterprises off legacy point-to-point services and onto an AI-ready NaaS platform
Held VP-level P&L, AI governance and segment accountability for the Large
Enterprise, public and neo-cloud portfolio, directing six senior architects and
strategists against signed quota.
This was an evolution, not a segment play. Large enterprises were
buying static point-to-point connectivity: wavelengths, point-to-point Ethernet,
services architected for a world where the workload sat still. The target state was
an AI-ready Network-as-a-Service platform that puts those same enterprises on
demand-driven capacity and connects them directly into the hyperscaler and neo-cloud
environments where their AI workloads actually live. The three parts are one system.
The enterprise is the customer, the hyperscalers and neo-clouds are the destination,
and the NaaS fabric is what makes the two continuous, technically and commercially.
The growth is that migration. 35% year over year and 75% month over month, landed
inside eight months, as enterprise accounts came out of legacy point-based services
and into the ready state. Roughly $145M of incremental ARR came from converting the
largest of them onto committed multi-year platform agreements, and AI-ready 400GbE
and 800GbE wavelength and GPU networking drove about 18% higher enterprise adoption.
The bet was placed on AI capacity and CapEx patterns 12 to 18 months before the
public market signaled them.
"Aaron has played a key part of Lumen's AI infrastructure chapter including positioning the Large Enterprise segment toward AI-ready NaaS, and driving corresponding commercial structures that create real growth."
Angela Finn, Senior Director, Sales, Lumen Technologies · July 2026
What stands behind this
The segment repositioning and the growth were provenance-checked by TrueSeat.io,
an independent candidate-verification service, against Lumen investor relations
material in 2026. That is a third-party review, not a document I can hand you a
link to, so it is marked as review rather than as verified.
What stands behind this
The roughly $145M incremental ARR and roughly 18% adoption lift are my own segment
figures. They are not published numbers and I do not present them as such.
Available for reference check on request.
Calix / 2016 to 2024
$453M Initial multiyear investment
Enabled a brand-new fiber ISP, and made the architecture the reason it could scale
Led architecture, executive pursuit strategy and commercial structuring for the win
that stood up a brand-new internet service provider on the Calix cloud-native
platform, won as a single-vendor solution against a $453M initial multiyear
investment.
It was won on architecture, not on price. What the operator needed
was an end-to-end simplified architecture: one platform spanning physical plant,
network elements, authentication, managed Wi-Fi and security, and subscription
software, rather than a stack of integrations to carry forward. That simplification
is what accelerated delivery and activation and compressed the distance between
fiber in the ground and a home actually enabled for service.
Speed was the whole investment thesis. The build had to move fast enough to satisfy
the investor requirements attached to the acquisition and to let a brand-new brand go
aggressively after the fiber-to-the-home take rate, on a forward-looking framework
that would not have to be rebuilt to do it. I built the deployment and
capital-optimization model directly with Apollo Global through the carve-out that
became Brightspeed, working with private equity investors on investment thesis,
acquisition rationale and network design.
"I saw this firsthand at Calix as we worked to align our strategy with Brightspeed. Aaron brought an entrepreneurial mindset to the pursuit, connecting deep technical requirements to the customer's business priorities and the broader investment thesis. He understood that winning required more than a strong solution."
James Dobbs, Product & GTM Strategy, worked with Aaron at Calix · July 2026
What stands behind this
Brightspeed's modernization on the Calix cloud-native platform is public. Calix's
March 2025 release describes Brightspeed launching multi-gig service in days rather
than months on the Calix Broadband Platform, and Brightspeed's own materials put
the resulting network across 20 states and more than 1.8 million locations enabled.
The $453M investment figure is mine.
Presidents Club, Calix, 2022, awarded for this win and its market impact. It is an
internal company award, so there is no public page to link. Documentation available
on request.
Speedcast / 2024 to 2025
$400M+ Generation-agnostic satellite, made repeatable
Made satellite communications generation-agnostic, then made the delivery model repeatable enough to scale globally
Satellite was mid-generational shift. GEO and MEO had carried the
industry for decades, with the latency, capacity and economics that implied. LEO
constellations, Starlink among them, arrived as genuine disruption, and the market did
not get to pause while it worked out what that meant. Customers needed service now, on
whatever generation actually fit the requirement in front of them.
So the answer was not to bet a generation. We delivered on a WAN-agnostic
architecture that could carry the same set of communication services across
GEO, MEO, LEO and terrestrial alike, and put the right transport behind the right need
rather than selling whatever the company happened to own. Secure and reliable
was the non-negotiable. For these customers connectivity is not a convenience
layered on the business, it is the operating condition of it.
That mattered because the customers are everywhere terrestrial infrastructure does not
reach. Commercial maritime cargo and cruise, where connectivity is now a decisive part
of the passenger and crew experience and a unifying layer across a fleet. Offshore oil
and gas. Yachts and ferries. Regions where fiber will not be trenched for a decade, or
ever. Any operation, on any water, on any continent, that needs real broadband and
cannot have a line run to it. Comms on the move is not a niche, it is every vertical
that a landline cannot serve.
A market moving that fast cannot be served by three regions run three different
ways. So the sequence was deliberate: one operating rhythm and cadence across
the regions first, process simplification second, because you cannot automate a process
you have not simplified, then automation into an end-to-end quote-to-cash model on
ServiceNow and Dynamics 365 so outcomes and cash timing were both legible. The return
compounded: 20% revenue growth on flat headcount, 20% faster service delivery, 30% of
manual process overhead eliminated, a two-month deployment improvement and a 20-point
NPS gain, while the business kept growing globally through the change.
"He is a natural integrator who does not ignore process evolution needs when leading programs that introduce changes small or revolutionary in nature. He has no inertia to mastering a new technology or product need."
Phillip Bronsdon, who managed Aaron directly · November 2018
What stands behind this
The operating metrics here, 20% revenue growth on flat headcount, 20% faster
delivery, 30% less manual overhead, the two-month deployment improvement and the
20-point NPS gain, are my own figures from inside the business. The mandate and my
role in it were reviewed by TrueSeat.io against company records. Available for
reference check, including peers from that team.
CenturyLink / CenturyTel / 2005 to 2016
~$35M Annual OPEX out, and it grew with volume
Consolidation that produced scale, not just savings
Owned voice and data services across more than 4,200 central offices, including
power, cooling, environmental and mechanical systems, outside-plant resiliency and
facility placement. Owning the physical estate is what made the rest of it possible.
The starting point was a small TDM-oriented system: a fixed baseline of
revenue with a fixed baseline of cost sitting against it. We reorganized it
into a distributed IP telephony network, consolidating long distance, hosted VoIP and
international onto one cloud-hosted platform. 75% fewer central-office systems
required, and coverage expanded from two regional markets to 22 major metros.
Both sides of the ledger moved at once, which is the part that usually gets missed.
The architecture pulled down the OPEX run rate on interconnects, customer services
and long haul, and improved how efficiently we could receive and terminate traffic.
At the same time the added reach put real volume on the system, and a repeatable
transaction model at that scale is what let us price more aggressively through
wholesale agreements. The growth arrived carrying better margin instead of diluting
it. The roughly $35M in annual operating expense was the reduction we could name, and
it kept increasing as more traffic came onto the platform.
"Aaron provided the strategic vision and architecture design for the IP voice and applications network at CenturyLink that is still used today, and guided the teams responsible for VoIP and IP technology implementation."
Bennett Gamel, peer for seven years at CenturyLink · May 2018
What stands behind this
Eleven years and five roles, ending 2016. These figures come from my own records of
that period and predate anything I can point you to publicly. The people I worked
for and the engineers I led are reachable, and that is the check I would offer.
Different companies. Different decades. One pattern.
Simplify the architecture until it can move · automate what simplification exposes · structure the commercial model so the result recurs
04 / Career arc
Service provider. Vendor. Customer. I have sat in all three chairs.
Most infrastructure executives have seen one side of this market. Knowing how the
other two think is what makes a deal structure hold.
2026 / Present
Founder & Principal
AI Unified Consulting LLC / Denver, CO
Founded an AI advisory practice on a specific thesis: move the business into an AI operating framework rather than bolting AI tools onto existing process.
Built the go-to-market strategy, delivery methodology and engagement model from zero, then productized a structured discovery framework: tailored intake, an analysis map surfacing operational inefficiency and revenue left on the table, persona-based recommendations, and crawl / walk / run engagement plans.
Runs the firm on its own AI-first operating stack of automated research engines and closed-loop tracking. The practice is its own proof of concept.
2026 / Present
Technical Strategist
Kerzie.ai / McKinney, TX
SMB-OS. Building a next-generation operating system for small and mid-sized business on top of the studio's AI framework. Digital first, with AI as the plumbing rather than the product: it pulls the whole business into a 360 view on a single pane of glass, then uses automation and agents so the owner runs the company proactively instead of reactively, with the insight to know which direction to push. Most small businesses do not lack data. They lack a place where all of it is one picture.
Technical strategist to the studio overall, hands-on in positioning, selling and delivering the AI-native platforms built on it.
Conversational AI for trades businesses that do not operate after hours, capturing, triaging and booking inquiries across phone, text, web and email so an after-hours voicemail becomes day-one engagement.
An AI framework behind a text-only front door connecting contractor supply to homeowner demand, running intake, scoping, a 90-second quote, dispatch and payment in a single thread.
2025 / 2026
Senior Director, Large Enterprise, Public & Neo-Cloud Segment
Lumen Technologies / Denver, CO
Full VP-level P&L, AI governance and segment accountability as product segment lead, directing six senior architects and strategists against signed quota.
Moved large enterprises off legacy point-to-point services, wavelengths and point-to-point Ethernet, onto an AI-ready NaaS platform connecting them into the hyperscaler and neo-cloud environments their workloads run in: 35% year over year and 75% month over month growth within eight months, won on foresight rather than price.
Advised neo-cloud and AI-factory operators on the value principles, ROI strategy and enterprise engagement models that differentiate specialized providers against centralized hyperscalers.
Created and launched the Lumen Validated Designs certification program and the Lumen Experience Center, an AI-factory lab and integration bench where partner ecosystems, edge compute and hyperscaler on-ramps were tested against the NaaS fabric, with customers immersed in a 3D AR/VR environment that accelerated solution closure.
2024 / 2025
Vice President, Global Systems Engineering & Managed Services
Speedcast / Denver, CO
Led 73 people across three global regions, owning systems and operational engineering from pre-sales through deployment and post-sale support on strategic accounts.
Delivered communication services on a WAN-agnostic architecture spanning GEO, MEO, LEO and terrestrial transport, so the right generation of satellite served the right requirement rather than whatever the company already owned. Secure and reliable was the non-negotiable.
Unified three differently-run regions onto one operating rhythm and cadence, simplified the process, then automated on top of it into an end-to-end quote-to-cash model on ServiceNow and Dynamics 365.
Overhauled the solution delivery lifecycle and introduced workload orchestration across globally deployed multi-WAN smart edge systems with SASE and Zero Trust.
Defined the lean operating model, applying AI as a business framework rather than a bolt-on tool, and standardized design libraries and handoff protocols for ServiceNow-based orchestration and a two-month deployment improvement.
Built a repeatable mobile demonstration model with Starlink and Sigma Systems proving comms-on-the-move over vendor-agnostic SD-WAN across commercial maritime cargo and cruise, offshore oil and gas, yachts and ferries, and regions terrestrial infrastructure will not reach.
2016 / 2024
Regional Vice President, Solutions Engineering, Major Accounts
Calix / Denver, CO
Built and led a 25-engineer solutions engineering organization across three regions on a pod operating model, covering the Tier 1 and Tier 2 accounts that were roughly 35% of total company revenue when the role began.
De-risked that revenue concentration by shifting the major-accounts mix toward Tier 3 and Tier 4 providers, rebalancing the base while growing the segment.
Led the pursuit that stood up a brand-new fiber ISP on the Calix cloud-native platform against a $453M initial multiyear investment, won as a single-vendor solution on an end-to-end simplified architecture built for build velocity.
Persuaded a national ISP's leadership to unify roughly 1.3 million legacy DSL subscribers under a single cloud-native control umbrella.
Opened Tier 1 doors on complex technology including NG-PON2 with Verizon as a single-vendor solution, and extended the platform into managed Wi-Fi and multi-dwelling units.
Architected the technical strategy behind the shift from hardware-centric to cloud-native SaaS, supporting revenue growth from roughly $350M to $1.2B+, and built board-level investment cases with C-suite leaders at global ISPs and Tier 1 carriers.
2005 / 2016
Technology & Engineering Leadership
CenturyLink / CenturyTel, now Lumen / Denver, Monroe, Austin
Five roles, promoted through: Vice President, Technology Transformation ·
Vice President, Application Strategy & Development · Director, Voice
Strategy & Applications Development · Director, Voice Solutions ·
Principal VoIP Architect.
Owned architecture, lifecycle and product development for E911, toll-free and emergency-alerting networks, building public-safety and first-responder depth at mass scale across fixed, wireless, terrestrial and non-terrestrial transport.
Directed 30 engineers and architects executing IP traffic migration strategy through 400%+ growth in global IP demand, contributing $200M, about 30%, in incremental revenue over three years.
Led up to three directors and 55 engineers through the TDM-to-IP transition, and wrote the product definitions, requirements and lifecycle plans for voice, contact center, UCaaS and broadband services at seven-figure subscriber scale, owning architecture for platforms carrying 4M+ subscribers.
Served as technical subject-matter expert in the $22.4B CenturyLink acquisition of Qwest (2011) and the $5B CenturyTel acquisition of Embarq (2009), delivering the platform assessments that shaped acquisition decisions.
1997 / 2005
Early career
Alcatel-Lucent · BTI · Williams Communications
Complex Network Trials Manager and Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Alcatel-Lucent, now Nokia, leading multi-vendor network trials for Tier 1 carriers and validating next-generation voice and multimedia architectures ahead of national deployment.
Senior Switch Technician at BTI, now Kinetic. Senior Systems Engineer at Williams Communications, now Lumen. Hands on the equipment before ever running the strategy.
"'Have you ever been THE EXPERT on anything?' Ask Aaron Jones that question, sit
back, relax, and enjoy listening to his in-depth experience
designing and implementing large-scale VoIP and IMS networks for some of the largest
carriers on the planet. Aaron's depth of knowledge and ability to see the big
picture are qualities that are not found very often in the same person."
David Fassnacht, worked with Aaron in the Alcatel-Lucent era · September 2009
05 / How I operate
How I actually show up, before you have to find out.
If you are deciding whether to put me in a seat, this is more useful than another
list of accomplishments. It is how I actually show up.
Ramp
Listen first, act second
Walking into an unfamiliar domain, I spend the first 30 days in one-on-ones with
regional leaders and their teams, mapping the patterns before restructuring
anything. New set of eyes, unburdened by incumbency. The restructure that follows
is then built on what is actually happening, not what the org chart claims.
Decisions
Outcome backward, not mechanics forward
I start from the customer or business outcome we are trying to produce, then back
into what has to be true for it to happen: the technology, the commercial
structure, the sequence, the capital. Starting from the mechanics is how teams
build the wrong thing efficiently.
Under pressure
De-escalate, then force the call
I step in front of the frustration rather than routing it downward, and then I
force the A-versus-B decision. Ambiguity is more expensive than a wrong choice
you can correct. Hard quarters have meant long, intense days, and I would rather
say that than pretend otherwise.
Persuasion
Patient reframing, not pressure
With customers, peers and my own teams, the tool is a reframe toward their
future-state outcome. I have moved leadership teams off multi-year technology
positions that way. It is slower than pressure and it holds.
"What truly makes him unique is his ability to engage in true
consultative selling. Aaron builds trust quickly and maintains strong relationships
that drive long-term success across the engagement. He brings both strategic
insight and a genuine, customer-first approach to everything he does."
Andrew Taylor, VP of Sales, Major Accounts, Calix · September 2025
Energy
Customer-facing, on the innovative edge
The work that compounds for me is in front of customers evangelizing the art of
the possible, on the newest thing in the market, and mentoring the leaders who
will take the seat after me. Give me a real problem statement and a desired
outcome and let me back into the plan.
Autonomy
A genuine seat, not a component
I do my best work with meaningful autonomy and a real place at the decision table.
I have deliberately learned to delegate and trust teams rather than hold the work.
What I do not do well is a transactional role where the mandate is to execute
someone else's already-made call.
"I've known Aaron for 15-20 years, since we worked together at CenturyTel/CenturyLink, and
I've had the pleasure of working alongside him again at more than one company since then,
which says a lot on its own. What stands out most is how he elevates
every team he's part of. He's a great partner: creative, driven, and customer
focused through and through."
James Feger, who managed Aaron directly · July 2026
06 / In their words
Everything above is my account of it. Here is everyone else's.
You have already met some of these voices, sitting next to the claims they corroborate.
Here they are together. Fifteen recommendations on my LinkedIn profile, written between
2007 and 2026 by the people who managed me, reported to me, and sold alongside me. All
public, all quoted exactly as written. Where a quote is shortened the cut is marked and
nothing else is changed.
What stands behind this
All fifteen are live and visible to any LinkedIn member on my profile, under
Recommendations. The relationship line under each name is LinkedIn's own, not mine:
it records whether that person managed me, reported to me, or worked alongside me.
Read them in full and in context.
"Aaron has played a key part of Lumen's AI infrastructure chapter
including positioning the Large Enterprise segment toward AI-ready NaaS, and driving
corresponding commercial structures that create real growth. Aaron is a
collaborative and impactful technology executive who drives positive transformation."
Lumen · July 2026
Angela FinnSenior Director, Sales, Neocloud & Data Center Operators, Lumen Technologies
"Aaron is one of the few who could take network and infrastructure complexity, and
turn it into an advantage for the customer. And he understood AI's impact on capacity
before most people were even asking the question. [...] At Lumen he ran Large
Enterprise Public and Neo-Cloud, and I was his Director, Product Innovation.
Everything ran through one question. 'What needs to be true for this
to work?' It sounds simple. It isn't. Internally, that turns a room of opinions
into conditions you can test. Same question to a customer, and suddenly they're the one
telling you what good looks like. Aaron describes it back and they see their own success
in it. I stole that question from him and still use it weekly. Aaron changes what the
work is. Most leaders just manage it. He architected networks before he ran customer
segments, so when he gets in the weeds with his team he actually belongs there. I'd work
for Aaron again all day long and twice on Sundays."
Reported to Aaron directly · July 2026
Terry BarbounisDirector, Product Innovation under Aaron at Lumen. Now Senior Director, Platform Activation
"Aaron Jones is the leader you want when technical, business, and investor strategies
must move as one. He creates alignment where complexity would otherwise slow the deal.
I saw this firsthand at Calix as we worked to align our strategy with
Brightspeed. Aaron brought an entrepreneurial mindset to the pursuit, connecting deep
technical requirements to the customer's business priorities and the broader investment
thesis. He understood that winning required more than a strong solution. The
technology, commercial story, and long-term value all had to reinforce one another.
Aaron earned trust across engineering, sales, executives, and customer stakeholders
because he could operate fluently in every room. He challenged assumptions, found
practical paths forward, and kept teams focused on the outcome. As AI reshapes
infrastructure and creates new ventures, that combination of technical depth, commercial
instinct, and investor-level thinking is rare. Aaron is rare. I'd bet on Aaron. Every
time."
Same team, Calix · July 2026
James DobbsProduct & GTM Strategy, Applied and Agentic AI Infrastructure
"I've known Aaron for 15-20 years, since we worked together at CenturyTel/CenturyLink,
and I've had the pleasure of working alongside him again at more than
one company since then, which says a lot on its own. Aaron approaches every
challenge and opportunity with an open mind and a real vision for what's possible. That
creativity consistently translates into great outcomes for the partners and customers he
works with, and his career progression is a direct reflection of that impact. What
stands out most is how he elevates every team he's part of. He's a great partner:
creative, driven, and customer focused through and through. Any organization would be
fortunate to have him."
Managed Aaron directly · July 2026
James FegerProduct & Technology Executive, AI & Cloud Infrastructure
"[...] Aaron does the unglamorous part. When we opened Aurora,
he recruited the contractors himself, one conversation at a time, and stayed on them
until the coverage was real. He didn't hand me a plan, he handed me a working market.
The rare thing is the combination. Most people who can talk credibly
about AI and infrastructure at the executive level have never had to go get a customer.
Aaron has done both, and he doesn't confuse the two. He's also straight with me
when the news is bad, which is worth more than anything on a resume."
Same team · July 2026
Wade KerzieFounder, Kerzie.ai
"Aaron Jones is an outstanding technology leader. In the seven years I consulted and
collaborated with Aaron as a peer at CenturyLink, he never ceased to impress me with
his technical knowledge, his willingness to embrace new technologies and practices,
and his energy and passion to deliver the best. Aaron provided the
strategic vision and architecture design for the IP voice and applications network at
CenturyLink that is still used today, and guided the teams responsible for VoIP
and IP technology implementation. [...] Aaron acted as a mentor and role model for many
of the technical staff that worked for him. His passion for excellence rubbed off onto
his team and he is a trusted leader."
Peer, seven years at CenturyLink · May 2018
Bennett GamelProduct Management Executive, now retired
Quite simply, he makes any team he is on better. And more successful! His deep technical knowledge of network and customer architectures consistently sets him apart. What truly makes him unique is his ability to engage in true consultative selling.
Andrew Taylor Same team, Calix · September 2025
Aaron is a tireless and fierce advocate for the customer. He is a natural integrator who does not ignore process evolution needs when leading programs that introduce changes small or revolutionary in nature. He has no inertia to mastering a new technology or product need.
Phillip Bronsdon Managed Aaron directly · November 2018
Aaron has the rare ability and technical aptitude to understand and articulate the challenges with the legacy network, regulatory hurdles, and the vision for the future. His ability to provide the 10,000 foot view and a technical deep dive spanning decades of network technology innovation is uncanny.
Nathan Hostetter Aaron was his client · July 2018
"Have you ever been THE EXPERT on anything?" Ask Aaron Jones that question, sit back, relax, and enjoy listening to his in-depth experience designing and implementing large-scale VoIP and IMS networks for some of the largest carriers on the planet.
David Fassnacht Worked with Aaron · September 2009
Aaron has a strong technology background and a well grounded strategic ability. He blends these skills to deliver actionable technology and new product plans, and has the unique ability to break complex technical issues down into simple terms.
Matt Rotter Principal, Asbury Court Advisors · August 2016
Aaron's unparalleled knowledge of voice and IMS environments makes him an excellent architecture and engineering resource for any VoIP project. His technical acumen combined with his strong work ethic allows him to accomplish anything he desires.
Husnain Bajwa Managed Aaron directly · November 2007
He has a great ability to understand and communicate telecommunication solutions at a managerial level as well as at a very detailed implementation level. Aaron will work tirelessly to solve a customer's problem or to help design a creative network solution.
Chris Jones Product Manager, Lucent Technologies · September 2009
Aaron is top notch and a hard worker. Definitely an asset to any company. His friendliness, technical knowledge and responsiveness are very impressive.
Joe Demmons Same team · September 2009
Aaron is hard working, capable, and detail oriented. He has shown the acumen to learn new products quickly and the ability to provide excellent support. I strongly recommend Aaron.
David Yildiz Worked with Aaron · September 2009
07 / Built, not briefed
I ship the systems, not just the strategy for them.
Four production systems, designed and built personally in 2026, running every day.
They started as a fix for my own weakest habit and became the clearest evidence I have.
The honest origin story: my strength has always been the live, verbal, relational
work. The narrative in the room. My weakness was converting that into crisp written
artifacts, and for most of my career I handed that off to someone on the team.
So I built a machine to do it instead, and in the process learned
more about applied AI than any certification would have taught me. That is the
same move I now advise clients to make: stop bolting AI onto the process, and move
the operating model itself.
"The rare thing is the combination. Most people who can talk credibly
about AI and infrastructure at the executive level have never had to go get a customer.
Aaron has done both, and he doesn't confuse the two. He's also straight with me
when the news is bad, which is worth more than anything on a resume."
Wade Kerzie, Founder, Kerzie.ai · July 2026
Operating system
An AI-run business operating environment
A file-based environment where AI carries execution across research, drafting,
tracking and scheduled routines. Every recurring obligation in the business is a
routine with its own dashboard, its own health state and its own audit trail.
Discovery engine
Role discovery and document optimization
A job description in, a scored and optimized document set out, with a discovery
engine crawling more than 30 applicant tracking systems and closed-loop status
tracking driven from inbound email. Multi-profile, so the same engine serves
more than one person without ever crossing their data.
Content engine
Researched long-form content with mechanical compliance
Daily professional content with generated visuals, researched from primary
sources, run through mechanical compliance checks, and human-approved before
anything publishes. The approval gate is a person, by design, every time.
Capture pipeline
Voice to filed, actioned note, unattended
A spoken thought on a phone arrives in the operating system as a processed,
deduplicated, action-extracted note with its commitments already routed to the
tracker. No transcription step I have to remember to do.
I would rather show you a working system than a slide about one.
Aaron P. Jones
08 / The patent
I patented agentic orchestration in 2018. Before it had a name.
What stands behind this
Granted patent, on the public record at the USPTO and mirrored on Google Patents.
Filed while I was at CenturyLink, granted 2018. Read the claims yourself: the
independent claim describes resolving a declared intent into a composed set of
services, which is the pattern agentic orchestration runs on today.
Declare the intended outcome. Let the system compose the services that deliver it.
That sentence is now the architectural pattern underneath agentic AI orchestration.
When I filed it, the problem I was solving was carrier services: a customer should
be able to state what they need the network to do without specifying which elements,
in which order, with which parameters. The system resolves intent into composition.
A decade later the same pattern is how AI agents are being built, and it is the
reason I did not have to learn a new mental model when this wave arrived. I had
already written it down.
Read the patent
"Aaron's unparalleled knowledge of voice and IMS environments makes him
an excellent architecture and engineering resource for any VoIP project. His
technical acumen combined with his strong work ethic and firm personal constitution
allows him to accomplish anything he desires."
Husnain Bajwa, who managed Aaron directly · November 2007, eleven years before the patent granted
09 / Why it matters
The infrastructure work that was never really about infrastructure.
The parts of this career I am most attached to are not the deal sizes. They are the
places where the network stopped being a product and started being a public utility.
Emergency calling and first responders
I owned architecture, lifecycle and product development for E911, toll-free and
emergency-alerting networks at national scale, across fixed, wireless, terrestrial
and non-terrestrial transport. When someone dials three digits on the worst day of
their life, a chain of infrastructure decisions made years earlier determines
whether help arrives. I have made those decisions.
Rural and underserved broadband
The fiber platform I helped stand up became a brand-new ISP now serving markets
across 20 states, much of it where the incumbents had stopped investing. Simplified
architecture was not an engineering preference there, it was the reason homes got
enabled for service in months instead of years. Separately, I deliberately shifted a
major accounts portfolio toward Tier 3 and Tier 4 providers, the small and rural
operators, and pushed to unify roughly 1.3 million legacy DSL subscribers onto a
modern control platform. The digital divide closes one carve-out at a time.
Connectivity where the ground cannot reach
At Speedcast the customers lived everywhere terrestrial infrastructure does not go.
Cargo crews and cruise passengers at sea, offshore oil and gas, ferries and yachts, and
regions where fiber will not be trenched for a decade or ever. Satellite is not a
fallback for those places, it is the only path to broadband at all.
Making that generation-agnostic mattered more than any single technology. A crew
180 miles offshore should get the same connectivity assumptions everyone on shore takes
for granted, and should not have to care whether the bits arrive over GEO, MEO or a
brand-new LEO constellation.
The people who take the seat next
I have built and led organizations of 25, 30, 55 and 73 people, and the part I
would do again for free is mentoring the leaders inside them. Several now run
larger teams than I did. Infrastructure I built will eventually be replaced.
The operators will not be.
10 / What I am after
Two doors. Both are open.
Door one / The seat
An executive leadership role owning AI infrastructure strategy: data centers,
network platforms, or Network-as-a-Service. The seat where physical capacity turns
into committed recurring revenue.
Phoenix and Arizona are the target. Denver metro or remote US works. The most
useful thing anyone can send me is an introduction.
Where I fit
Neoclouds and AI factory operators building a durable commercial motion, particularly as the revenue mix tilts from training to inference and capacity has to be sold as committed platform rather than spot GPU hours
Data center operators scaling gigawatt-class AI campuses, where the binding constraints are power, grid interconnect, liquid cooling and critical facilities rather than floor space
Network, NaaS and carrier platforms turning transport into platform revenue: data center interconnect, 400 and 800GbE wavelengths, GPU fabric, and the on-ramps into hyperscaler and neocloud environments
Enterprises standing up their own AI capacity, deciding what runs in a hyperscaler, what runs in a neocloud, and what has to sit on infrastructure they control for sovereignty, latency or unit economics
Private equity and infrastructure-capital-backed assets that need a technology executive who can also sit across the table from investors and a board, where the underwriting question has moved from can it be built to will it be utilized
Where I do not
Individual-contributor sales roles
Pure staffing-model IT management
Any seat with no ownership of the platform economics
Door two / The practice
The framework is the product. The tools are just what it happens to use.
Most businesses are bolting AI onto a process that was designed around people doing
the coordination. That buys you a faster version of the same friction. The move is to
put the operating framework itself into AI and let the mechanics run
underneath the business rather than through the middle of everyone's day.
What the framework absorbs is the connective tissue: the correlation between
functions, the handoffs, the chasing, the interdisciplinary translation, the internal
dialogue a company burns most of its energy on. None of that is the work a customer
pays for. All of it is where the day goes.
When it runs automatically, the people move up a level. They stop executing the
coordination and start orchestrating it: coaching the machine,
guiding it, correcting it, pointing it at what matters this week. A framework is not
a tool you pick up and put down. It is a machine with a defined purpose that
you interact with, engage, guide and instruct.
The business gets motion and agility back, because nothing is sitting behind a message
that never got sent, nothing is misaligned between two functions that never spoke, and
nothing atrophies when the person who held it in their head moves on. What is left
over is attention, and it goes where it should have been the whole time: the customer,
the engagement, the outcome. Less mechanics, more of what actually matters.
That single thesis runs through both halves of the work.
AI Unified Consulting is the intake and advisory arm: structured
discovery, an honest analysis of where the inefficiency and the money left on the
table actually are, persona-based recommendations, and a crawl / walk / run engagement
plan with real pricing. Kerzie.ai is where the platforms get built,
SMB-OS among them, so what an owner adopts is a framework that already exists and
already runs rather than a slide about one.
If you want to understand how an AI framework can help your business excel, contact me
for a 30-minute conversation at
aiunifiedconsulting.net.