Jonathan Rosen: AVP, Head of Engineering, Techwave
Jonathan Rosen serves as the assistant vice-president (AVP) and head of engineering for Techwave, leading the North America Engineering Competency. In his role, Rosen oversees strategy, sales and delivery across the engineering vertical, serving as a profit and loss leader and focusing on optimising business operations, advancing digital transformation and building expertise in information and communications technology.
With a career spanning engineering, technology and telecommunications, Rosen brings a highly strategic and versatile approach to his work.
In Rosen’s view, the telecom sector is at the forefront of digital transformation, with significant trends poised to reshape customer expectations and redefine the roles of telecom providers. Key among these trends is the expansion of 5G and 6G. He also highlights the transformative role of edge computing, which distributes data processing across data centres to reduce latency, increase bandwidth and enable real-time applications across various industries.
Rosen also emphasises the growing importance of zero-trust architecture and privacy engineering in scaling data-driven services securely, as well as the potential of artificial intelligence to optimise networks, manage resources and predict maintenance, which helps reduce churn and operational costs. He sees quantum computing as another transformative trend, bringing new security capabilities and challenges in encryption.
However, Rosen acknowledges the sector’s challenges, including increasing market competition, regulatory pressures and talent management complexities. He further notes, “In North America, high capex for infrastructure development is a significant concern. The race to build 5G and fibre-to-the-home infrastructure has slowed down, even though coverage remains incomplete. Telecom’s capital intensity remains higher than most industries, leading to high debt levels amid rising interest rates. Smaller telecom companies face high equipment costs, creating challenging business cases and barriers to market entry.”
Reflecting on his career, Rosen recalls, “My most memorable assignment was leading the multi-year, multi-region turnkey engineering project for AT&T. It was both challenging and rewarding due to its scale and the complexity of executing it across multiple regions.”
As for his management style, Rosen describes it as inclusive, supportive and entrepreneurial.
Outside of work, he enjoys tennis, cricket and rock climbing, and he loves travelling to both urban and remote destinations. He also has a passion for experimenting in the kitchen. He lives in New York with his wife and two children.
