Work visa data shows how much the telecom giant pays for roles in software, data, and networking.
AT&T helped shape the modern telecommunications industry -- now it has to reinvent itself.
"It's kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, honestly, or at least once-in-a-career opportunity to be able to rebuild networks like that," the company's technology chief, Jeremy Legg, said Monday at a KeyBanc tech conference.
For more than a century, AT&T built and maintained a vast network of copper wires and dedicated switches that carried voice and data across the us.
But that legacy infrastructure is no longer suited to 21st-century demands for speed and mobility that are better served by fiber optic networks and wireless spectrum.
AT&T is now running enough fiber each month to reach from New York to Los Angeles, Legg said. The new network architecture is less hands-on and instead involves software-based solutions that are more centrally managed, like remotely administered computers, devices, or cloud servers.
"If we're going to be competitive in the markets of the future, we have to change the infrastructure that we have today," he said.
Salary data shows how much AT&T is paying some of the employees behind its tech transformation.
Company filings with the US Department of Labor show AT&T sought to hire 345 workers through the US H-1B visa program in the first half of this reporting year, largely in software development, IT, and network engineering. That number is up from about 266 for the same period last year and well above 69 from two years ago.
By comparison, Walmart looked to hire around 1,750 workers H-1B program 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 not just on how much employees earn in certain roles, but where a company is looking to grow.
AT&T lists nearly 1,700 open jobs on its careers website as of August 14, with 360 openings in US-based corporate and technology roles. All of those are full-time in-office positions, with about half based in Texas or Georgia.
Most of the positions listed in the H-1B data are in Dallas-area offices, while about 15% of the jobs are in the Atlanta area.