Job description

Location Designation: Hybrid - 3 days per week Role Overview As the Enterprise AI Architect, you will serve as the technical anchor for the platform and the most senior individual contributor on the team and also AI architect for AIGC. You will define the engineering patterns, reference architectures, and reusable platform capabilities that every AI solution built across the organization will inherit. This role is responsible for designing and building the platform's most complex components—including AI lifecycle registries, control-plane services, harness and memory capabilities, and the engineering foundations that enable teams to rapidly develop, deploy, and govern agentic AI solutions. You'll partner closely with the AI Platform Lead while providing technical mentorship across the engineering team through architecture reviews, engineering standards, and hands-on implementation. This is a deeply technical role for an engineer who enjoys solving difficult distributed systems problems across cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, AI runtimes, and software architecture. The platform is built on Google Cloud and leverages modern cloud-native capabilities while maintaining portability through open standards and reusable engineering patterns. Our Engineering Principles Our team is intentionally small, senior, and highly technical. Regardless of title, every engineer is expected to build AI systems—and build with AI. • Build agents that power the platform. Develop platform capabilities as intelligent agents—not just traditional services. Examples include lifecycle management agents that register, version, monitor, govern, and retire AI assets across the enterprise. • Build cloud agents that plan and implement. Create agents that can translate business needs into implementation plans, orchestrate the required skills and tooling, and execute work with human oversight at the appropriate checkpoints. • Build end-to-end multi-agent solutions. Design and implement solutions where specialized agents collaborate to architect systems, provision infrastructure, generate code, validate through dedicated testing agents, deploy applications, perform post-deployment verification, and maintain complete operational traceability. • Build with AI-assisted engineering tools. Be fluent with modern AI development tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, or equivalent technologies. AI-assisted software development is a core engineering competency and will be evaluated throughout the interview process. What You'll Do • Define and evolve the enterprise reference architecture and reusable engineering patterns that underpin every AI asset, including common registration schemas, semantic metadata, execution contracts, governance controls, and lifecycle management. • Design and build the platform's most technically challenging components, including AI lifecycle registries, AI control-plane services, model abstraction layers, enterprise memory services, retrieval capabilities, and reusable platform APIs. • Develop the engineering foundations that enable rapid delivery of agentic AI solutions, including reusable scaffolds, frameworks, builder agents, and multi-agent implementation patterns. • Deliver platform capabilities as intelligent agents where appropriate, enabling the platform to automate its own lifecycle management, planning, governance, and operational workflows. • Establish engineering standards for software quality, testing, CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, observability, security-by-default, and AI-assisted software development across the platform team. • Drive platform portability through open standards, containerization, standardized telemetry, metadata, model serving, and cloud-native engineering practices that avoid unnecessary vendor lock-in. • Review complex designs and production code, mentor senior engineers, and help establish a culture of technical excellence across the organization. • Build production-quality software while leveraging AI-assisted engineering throughout the software development lifecycle. What You'll Bring Required Skills • Significant experience designing and building production-scale software platforms, developer platforms, AI platforms, or distributed systems in cloud-native environments. • Deep expertise in full-stack software engineering, including backend services, APIs, distributed systems, and modern engineering practices, with the ability to own systems through production operations. • Strong experience with cloud infrastructure and platform engineering, including Google Cloud Platform (preferred), Kubernetes, containers, Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), CI/CD, identity, networking, observability, and multi-tenant architectures. • Hands-on expertise building production generative AI and agentic systems, including LLM runtimes, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), memory architectures, multi-agent orchestration, Model Context Protocol (MCP), agent-to-agent (A2A) communication, and evaluation frameworks. • Experience designing secure, governed AI platforms, including identity-aware access controls, runtime guardrails, policy enforcement, auditability, observability, and responsible AI practices. • Strong software engineering background with expert-level Python and experience with one or more additional languages such as Go, Java, or TypeScript. • Demonstrated experience using AI-assisted software development tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, or similar technologies as part of modern engineering workflows. • Proven ability to influence engineering direction through technical leadership, architecture reviews, mentoring, and engineering best practices. Preferred Skills • Experience building enterprise AI platforms within financial services, insurance, or another highly regulated industry. • Experience with Vertex AI, LangChain, Google ADK, AutoGen, CrewAI, MLflow, OpenTelemetry, Ray, vLLM, DeepSpeed, Delta UniForm, Apache Iceberg, or related AI platform technologies. • Experience building reusable developer platforms, internal engineering frameworks, or platform engineering capabilities adopted across multiple teams. • Knowledge of enterprise AI governance frameworks including NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, or emerging AI regulations. Why This Role • Own the platform's foundation. Design and build the reusable architecture, services, and engineering patterns that every enterprise AI solution will inherit. • Solve genuinely difficult engineering problems. Work across AI control planes, enterprise memory, distributed systems, multi-agent orchestration, and platform engineering at enterprise scale. • Stay deeply technical. This is a Principal Engineer role with significant technical ownership and influence, allowing you to shape architecture and engineering direction while remaining hands-on. • Work alongside exceptional engineers. Join a small, senior engineering team focused on solving complex problems with high autonomy, minimal bureaucracy, and a strong engineering culture. • Create lasting impact. The platform capabilities you build will become the engineering foundation for AI across New York Life. Location We are committed to attracting exceptional talent and will consider flexible work arrangements for the right candidate. Pay Transparency Salary Range: $147,500-$211,000 Overtime eligible: Exempt Discretionary bonus eligible: Yes Sales bonus eligible: No Actual base salary will be determined based on several factors but not limited to individual’s experience, skills, qualifications, and job location. Additionally, employees are eligible for an annual discretionary bonus. In addition to base salary, employees may also be eligible to participate in an incentive program. Company Overview At New York Life, our 180-year legacy of purpose and integrity fuels our future. As we evolve into a more technology-, data-, and AI-enabled organization, we remain grounded in the values that drive lasting impact. Our diverse business portfolio creates opportunities to make a difference across industries and communities—inviting bold thinking, collaborative problem-solving, and purpose-driven innovation. Here, you’ll find the rare balance of long-standing stability and forward momentum, supported by an inclusive team that honors tradition while embracing progress. As a Fortune 100 mutual company, we offer a place to grow your skills, contribute to meaningful work, and deliver solutions that matter. Your ideas drive what’s next, and your growth powers it. Our Benefits We provide a full package of benefits for employees – and have unique offerings for a modern workforce, including leave programs, adoption assistance, and student loan repayment programs. Based on feedback from our employees, we continue to refine and add benefits to our offering, so that you can flourish both inside and outside of work. Click here to discover more about our comprehensive benefit options or visit our NYL Benefits Site . Our Commitment to Inclusion At New York Life, fostering an inclusive workplace is fundamental to who we are and how we serve our communities. We have a longstanding commitment to creating an environment where individuals can contribute their best and succeed together. This foundation is rooted in our core values of humanity and integrity, ensuring that every employee feels valued and supported. By embracing a broad range of perspectives and experiences, we achieve greater success and fulfill our promise of providing financial security and peace of mind to families across all communities. Click here to learn more about New York Life’s leadership in this space. Recognized as one of Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Companies, New York Life is committed to improving local communities through a culture of employee giving and volunteerism, supported by the Foundation . We're proud that due to our mutuality, we operate in the best interests of our policy owners. To learn more about career opportunities at New York Life, please visit the Careers page of www.NewYorkLife.com . Visit our LinkedIn to see how our employees and agents are leading the industry and impacting communities. Visit our Newsroom to learn more about how our company is constantly evolving to meet our clients' and employees’ needs. Job Requisition ID: 94420

Requirements

Must-haves

Location Designation: Hybrid - 3 days per week
Our Engineering Principles
Our team is intentionally small, senior, and highly technical. Regardless of title, every engineer is expected to build AI systems—and build with AI.
Develop the engineering foundations that enable rapid delivery of agentic AI solutions, including reusable scaffolds, frameworks, builder agents, and multi-agent implementation patterns.
Deliver platform capabilities as intelligent agents where appropriate, enabling the platform to automate its own lifecycle management, planning, governance, and operational workflows.
Establish engineering standards for software quality, testing, CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, observability, security-by-default, and AI-assisted software development across the platform team.
Drive platform portability through open standards, containerization, standardized telemetry, metadata, model serving, and cloud-native engineering practices that avoid unnecessary vendor lock-in.
Review complex designs and production code, mentor senior engineers, and help establish a culture of technical excellence across the organization.
Build production-quality software while leveraging AI-assisted engineering throughout the software development lifecycle.
Significant experience designing and building production-scale software platforms, developer platforms, AI platforms, or distributed systems in cloud-native environments.
Deep expertise in full-stack software engineering, including backend services, APIs, distributed systems, and modern engineering practices, with the ability to own systems through production operations.
Experience designing secure, governed AI platforms, including identity-aware access controls, runtime guardrails, policy enforcement, auditability, observability, and responsible AI practices.
Strong software engineering background with expert-level Python and experience with one or more additional languages such as Go, Java, or TypeScript.

Nice-to-haves

Experience building enterprise AI platforms within financial services, insurance, or another highly regulated industry.
Experience with Vertex AI, LangChain, Google ADK, AutoGen, CrewAI, MLflow, OpenTelemetry, Ray, vLLM, DeepSpeed, Delta UniForm, Apache Iceberg, or related AI platform technologies.
Experience building reusable developer platforms, internal engineering frameworks, or platform engineering capabilities adopted across multiple teams.
Knowledge of enterprise AI governance frameworks including NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, or emerging AI regulations.
Why This Role
Own the platform's foundation. Design and build the reusable architecture, services, and engineering patterns that every enterprise AI solution will inherit.
Solve genuinely difficult engineering problems. Work across AI control planes, enterprise memory, distributed systems, multi-agent orchestration, and platform engineering at enterprise scale.
Stay deeply technical. This is a Principal Engineer role with significant technical ownership and influence, allowing you to shape architecture and engineering direction while remaining hands-on.
Work alongside exceptional engineers. Join a small, senior engineering team focused on solving complex problems with high autonomy, minimal bureaucracy, and a strong engineering culture.
Create lasting impact. The platform capabilities you build will become the engineering foundation for AI across New York Life.
We are committed to attracting exceptional talent and will consider flexible work arrangements for the right candidate.

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Effort: medium

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