Description and Requirements
Title: Sr. Principal AI Engineer
Location(s): Cary, NC
Setting: Hybrid
Reports to: AVP, Product Development Engineering
Travel: Less than 5%
The Team You Will Join
Global Technology - RIS team is responsible for technology development, information and cyber security, and data strategy and analytics in support of the Retirement & Income Solutions line of business. You will work on a team with approximately 200+ technical professionals and work with our stakeholders and partners to build innovative technology solutions.
The Opportunity
Retirement & Income Solutions is looking for a Sr. Principal AI Engineer to be responsible for envisioning, influencing, and helping set overall technical roadmap for RIS, staying abreast and identifying innovation and technology advancements within and outside of industry, and driving the architecture selection, software design, and implementation of strategic technical solutions. We are looking for someone who's skilled with modern technologies, such as Generative AI, Cloud-native applications with high scalability architecture, DevSecOps best practices, etc., who is forward-looking and can leverage emerging technologies within and outside of our industry and is comfortable with strategic experimentation. You will be responsible for setting development standards and processes which establish, meet, and exceed our enterprise standards, reduces risk, and promote team's productivity and quality of delivery. As a technical leader, this person will collaborate closely with the RTEs, Product Managers, Scrum Leads, and Product Owners to ensure overall solution delivery aligns to business goals and objectives while providing proper technology runway. The role is expected to have mastery of software development and related middleware and infrastructure considerations, stay abreast of leading-edge technologies, such as Generative AI and Cloud native application design and implementation, and will be a critical resource shared across multiple Agile Release Trains.
How You'll Help Us Build a Confident Future (Key Responsibilities)

• Provide thought leadership and technical direction to the overall RIS organization on topics such as Generative AI, Cloud native application architecture, and DevSecOps, and other emerging technologies
• Foster the engineering excellence culture and deliver clear communication regarding technical direction and solutions to senior leaders across our Business, Finance, Operations and Technology organizations.
• Partner with Product Management and other engineering leaders to define and develop roadmap, standards and processes for ensuring secure, high velocity, high code quality across the entire team and facilitating team adoption of tools and processes to maintain the standards.
• Lead the modernization efforts of applications to meet the high availability and scalability requirements.
• Analyze, design, and drive solutions for major components and features; Leveraging hands-on skills to implement enterprise caliber full stack solutions with quick turnaround.
• Frequently interface with key stakeholders and business leaders, presenting and communicating technology roadmap and how they drive business benefits and priorities.
• Continuously discover, evaluate, and implement new technologies and frameworks to maximize teams' software development efficiency.
• Work with Agile teams, comprehend, analyze process or technology blockers and direct/action to resolve them. The role will own resolution of all barriers that impede the important work done by the teams.
• As a leader in US Technology, be an active participant on making the broader teams win.
• Be data-driven and passionately drive evolution of metrics and collection/reporting of engineering metrics. Partner with product manager and contribute to business metrics.
• Perform design and code reviews ensuring technical team's compliance with best practices
• Provide mentorship and guidance to software engineers, test automation engineers within the organization.
• Investigate and resolve production management incidents, problems, and service requests when escalated from normal support team

What You Need to Succeed (Required Qualifications)
• 15+ plus years in software development, with at least 10 years in full-stack software engineering
• Solid understanding of generative AI models, LLM, latent space, vector database, deep learning, etc., and has real life experiences in leveraging such technologies in developing technical solutions.
• Ability to build, deliver and operate complex systems (preferably Azure Cloud-native)
• Proficiency with Java application development with more than 15 years' experience
• Proficiency with Javascript frameworks (ReactJS preferred) with more than 8 years of experience
• Proficiency with Microservices and RESTful API with more than 8 years of experience
• Proficiency with various database technologies and solutions, including both SQL (Oracle, MS SQL Server, or preferably Azure SQL) and NoSQL (CosmosDB preferred), with more than 8 years of experience.
• Git-based repositories such as GitHub, Bitbucket or Azure Repos
• More than 8 years of working experience in Agile teams
• Cross functional leadership: organize, motivate, and lead those within and outside of the team
• Container-based development leveraging Docker and/or Kubernetes
• Experience with DevSecOps practices and tooling for CI/CD, release management, and automation using Azure DevOps, Atlassian, or Jenkins
• Experience with Junit/Mockito or equivalent unit testing frameworks
• Experience collaborating with and presenting to VP, C-Level
What Can Give You an Edge (Additional Skills)
• Bachelor's Degree or more advanced degree in Computer Science / Engineering or related field
• Experience with BDD and Functional Test Automation using tools such as Cucumber and Selenium is a plus
• Proficiency with modern web frameworks such as Node.js, AngularJS, and others
• Strong experience with Microsoft Azure Services: Functions, AKS, ASE, CosmosDB, Storage, App Service
• Experience with MACH architecture (Microservices, API, Cloud, Headless) and cloud-first infrastructure
• Experience with Veracode and security best practices
• Websphere Application Server experience is a plus
• Experience with tools such as helmcharts, ansible and Terraform are a big plus
The wage range for applicants for this position is $180,000 to $210,400. This role is also eligible for annual short-term incentive compensation and stock-based long-term incentives. MetLife offers a comprehensive benefits program, including healthcare benefits, life insurance, retirement benefits, parental leave, legal plan services and paid time off. All incentives and benefits are subject to the applicable plan terms.
Benefits We Offer
Our U.S. benefits address holistic well-being with programs for physical and mental health, financial wellness, and support for families. We offer a comprehensive health plan that includes medical/prescription drug and vision, dental insurance, and no-cost short- and long-term disability. We also provide company-paid life insurance and legal services, a retirement pension funded entirely by MetLife and 401(k) with employer matching, group discounts on voluntary insurance products including auto and home, pet, critical illness, hospital indemnity, and accident insurance, as well as Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and digital mental health programs, parental leave, volunteer time off, tuition assistance and much more!
About MetLife
Recognized on Fortune magazine's list of the 2023 "World's Most Admired Companies" as well as the 2023 Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For ®, MetLife , through its subsidiaries and affiliates, is one of the world's leading financial services companies; providing insurance, annuities, employee benefits and asset management to individual and institutional customers. With operations in more than 40 markets, we hold leading positions in the United States, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Our purpose is simple - to help our colleagues, customers, communities, and the world at large create a more confident future. United by purpose and guided by empathy, we're inspired to transform the next century in financial services. At MetLife, it's #AllTogetherPossible. Join us!
Benefits We Offer
Our U.S. benefits address holistic well-being with programs for physical and mental health, financial wellness, and support for families. We offer a comprehensive health plan that includes medical/prescription drug and vision, dental insurance, and no-cost short- and long-term disability. We also provide company-paid life insurance and legal services, a retirement pension funded entirely by MetLife and 401(k) with employer matching, group discounts on voluntary insurance products including auto and home, pet, critical illness, hospital indemnity, and accident insurance, as well as Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and digital mental health programs, parental leave, volunteer time off, tuition assistance and much more!
About MetLife
Recognized on Fortune magazine's list of the 2023 "World's Most Admired Companies" as well as the 2023 Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For ®, MetLife , through its subsidiaries and affiliates, is one of the world's leading financial services companies; providing insurance, annuities, employee benefits and asset management to individual and institutional customers. With operations in more than 40 markets, we hold leading positions in the United States, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Our purpose is simple - to help our colleagues, customers, communities, and the world at large create a more confident future. United by purpose and guided by empathy, we're inspired to transform the next century in financial services. At MetLife, it's #AllTogetherPossible . Join us!
Equal Employment Opportunity/Disability/Veterans
If you need an accommodation due to a disability, please email us at [email protected]. This information will be held in confidence and used only to determine an appropriate accommodation for the application process.
MetLife maintains a drug-free workplace.
#BI-Hybrid