At T. Rowe Price, we identify and actively invest in opportunities to help people thrive in an evolving world. As a premier global asset management organization with more than 85 years of experience, we provide investment solutions and a broad range of equity, fixed income, and multi-asset capabilities to individuals, advisors, institutions, and retirement plan sponsors. We take an active, independent approach to investing, offering our dynamic perspective and meaningful partnership so our clients can feel more confident.
We believe doing the right thing for our clients and our associates is good business. With a career at the firm, you can expect opportunities to create real impact at work and in your community. You’ll enjoy resources to support your career path, as well as compensation, benefits, and flexibility to enrich your life. Here, you’ll find a collaborative culture that respects and values differences and colleagues who share a spirit of generosity.
Join us for the opportunity to grow and make a difference in ways that matter to you.
Role Summary
Positions are available in our New York City office or with our AI Engineering squad in Harbor Point, Baltimore, MD. In either location, you will join a collaborative team of engineers, product owners, and business partners building high-impact AI products with leverage across the firm.
As a Lead Software Engineer on T. Rowe Price Labs' AI Engineering team, you will lead the architecture, design, and delivery of complex production-grade AI agents and intelligent systems. You will lead the incubation of new AI products, drive experimentation with emerging technologies and innovative ideas, and partner with business-aligned technology teams to enable broader adoption at scale.
This is a hands-on technical leadership role for someone with deep software and AI engineering expertise who enjoys solving complex and ambiguous problems, mentoring engineers, and shaping technical direction. You will guide reusable AI capabilities, influence engineering standards across teams, and help define the future of AI engineering at T. Rowe Price.
Responsibilities
- Lead the architecture, design, development, deployment, and evolution of complex production-grade AI agents and intelligent systems.
- Set technical direction for AI solutions, making informed trade-offs across models, orchestration patterns, retrieval, tools, data, infrastructure, latency, cost, security, reliability, and long-term maintainability.
- Lead teams through ambiguous and technically complex AI problems, from experimentation and architecture through production adoption and scale.
- Define and evolve engineering standards for production AI, including evaluation, testing, observability, guardrails, failure handling, security, and responsible deployment.
- Guide the development of reusable AI capabilities and shared platform components across areas such as agent orchestration, tool use, retrieval-based systems, evaluation frameworks, observability, and guardrails.
- Evaluate emerging models, frameworks, tools, and AI engineering approaches and provide technical direction on when and how they should be adopted.
- Provide hands-on technical leadership and mentorship to engineers, raising the bar on architecture, engineering quality, problem solving, and execution.
- Lead technical design and code reviews and help resolve complex engineering challenges across teams and systems.
- Drive the Build-Operate-Transfer model by incubating new AI products, hardening them for production, and partnering with business-aligned technology teams to transition proven solutions for long-term ownership and scale.
- Ensure AI systems achieve measurable quality, production readiness, operational observability, appropriate safety controls, and sustainable total cost of ownership.
- Identify opportunities for shared AI platforms and abstractions, balancing reusable enterprise capabilities with product-specific requirements.
- Identify and pursue opportunities to apply AI in ways that accelerate workflows, improve decision-making, and create scalable business impact across the firm.
Business Knowledge
- Engage directly with business stakeholders, product owners, senior partners, and technology leaders to understand priorities and shape solution and technical direction.
- Translate complex and ambiguous business needs into robust AI solutions and architectures that support both immediate value and broader enterprise adoption.
- Apply strong product and engineering judgment to balance innovation, scalability, business value, risk, cost, security, and long-term maintainability.
- Influence technical decisions across initiatives and communicate complex AI concepts, architectures, risks, and trade-offs effectively to technical and non-technical audiences.
Qualifications
Required:
- BS or MS in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience, with 8+ years of progressive software engineering experience.
- Extensive hands-on software engineering experience in object-oriented languages such as Python, Java, or JavaScript/TypeScript, including experience leading technical delivery across teams or major initiatives.
- Deep hands-on experience designing and delivering AI-enabled systems, intelligent workflows, or agentic applications in production or near-production environments.
- Strong expertise in modern AI engineering patterns such as agent orchestration, tool/function calling, retrieval-based systems, prompt and context engineering, evaluation, observability, guardrails, and failure handling.
- Demonstrated ability to architect production AI systems and make informed trade-offs across model capability, quality, latency, cost, reliability, security, and maintainability.
- Extensive experience architecting and delivering cloud-native solutions using AWS or equivalent, containerized microservices, APIs, and modern software delivery practices.
- Strong understanding of evaluation and testing strategies for AI systems, including approaches for measuring and improving non-deterministic system behavior.
- Exceptional analytical, problem-solving, architecture, and system-design skills, with demonstrated ability to lead engineers through complex and ambiguous technical challenges.
- Demonstrated commitment to engineering excellence through setting and upholding standards for automated testing, code reviews, observability, security, and continuous delivery.
- Strong communication and influence skills, with the ability to shape technical direction across engineering, product, business, and senior stakeholders.
- Demonstrated experience mentoring engineers and raising technical capability across teams.
- Passion for staying current with the rapidly evolving AI landscape and the judgment to distinguish promising technologies from short-lived trends.
Preferred:
- Experience establishing engineering standards or technical direction across multiple teams.
- Understanding of financial markets, asset management, or financial instruments.
FINRA Requirements
FINRA licenses are not required and will not be supported for this role.
Work Flexibility
This role is eligible for hybrid work, with up to three days per week from home.
Base Salary Ranges
Please review the job posting for the location of this specific opportunity.
$145,000.00 - $247,000.00 for the location of: Maryland, Colorado, Washington and remote workers$159,000.00 - $272,000.00 for the location of: Washington, D.C.
$181,000.00 - $309,000.00 for the location of: New York, California
Placement within the range provided above is based on the individual’s relevant experience and skills for the role. Base salary is only one component of our total compensation package. Employees may be eligible for a discretionary bonus, which is determined upon company and individual performance.
Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
At T. Rowe Price, our associates are our greatest asset. We thrive because our company culture is built on inclusion and because we sustain a work environment where associates can bring their best selves to work every day. The backgrounds, talents, and experiences of our global associates allow us to embrace new ideas and perspectives that move our business priorities forward and enable us to deliver strong client outcomes. Here, you can expect equal opportunity and fair and consistent treatment for all.
Benefits
We value your goals and needs, at work and in life. As an associate, you’ll be supported with resources, benefits, and work-life balance so you can thrive in ways that matter to you.
Featured employee benefits to enrich your life:
Competitive compensation
Annual bonus eligibility
A generous retirement plan
Hybrid work schedule
Health and wellness benefits, including online therapy
Paid time off for vacation, illness, medical appointments, and volunteering days
Family care resources, including fertility and adoption benefits
Learn more about our benefits.
Skills Required
- BS or MS in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
- 8+ years of progressive software engineering experience
- Extensive hands-on software engineering experience in Python, Java, or JavaScript/TypeScript
- Experience leading technical delivery across teams or major initiatives
- Deep hands-on experience designing and delivering AI-enabled systems, intelligent workflows, or agentic applications in production or near-production environments
- Strong expertise in agent orchestration, tool/function calling, retrieval-based systems, prompt and context engineering, evaluation, observability, guardrails, and failure handling
- Experience architecting production AI systems and balancing model capability, quality, latency, cost, reliability, security, and maintainability
- Extensive experience architecting and delivering cloud-native solutions using AWS or equivalent, containerized microservices, APIs, and modern software delivery practices
- Strong understanding of evaluation and testing strategies for AI systems, including measuring and improving non-deterministic system behavior
- Exceptional analytical, problem-solving, architecture, and system-design skills
- Experience leading engineers through complex and ambiguous technical challenges
- Experience setting and upholding standards for automated testing, code reviews, observability, security, and continuous delivery
- Strong communication and influence skills across engineering, product, business, and senior stakeholders
- Experience mentoring engineers and raising technical capability across teams
- Passion for staying current with the evolving AI landscape and evaluating emerging technologies
- Experience establishing engineering standards or technical direction across multiple teams
- Understanding of financial markets, asset management, or financial instruments
T. Rowe Price Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about T. Rowe Price and has not been reviewed or approved by T. Rowe Price.
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Retirement Support — Retirement offerings are positioned as a standout, including strong 401(k) matching/contributions and related long-term savings features. Employee stock purchase options are also cited as part of the overall rewards structure that adds value beyond base pay.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time-off benefits are repeatedly framed as generous, including sizeable PTO allotments and multiple paid-leave categories. This breadth of leave is described as a meaningful component of the overall rewards package.
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Career-Linked Recognition & Rewards — Annual bonuses and performance-linked rewards are described as common components of total compensation. Tuition assistance and development support are also presented as rewards that reinforce longer-term career growth.
T. Rowe Price Insights
What We Do
T. Rowe Price is an asset management firm focused on delivering global investment management excellence and retirement services that investors can rely on—now, and over the long term. Headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, we provide an array of mutual funds, subadvisory services, separate account management, recordkeeping, and related services for individuals, advisors, institutions, and retirement plan sponsors. At T. Rowe Price, we believe in strategic investing. It has guided how we do business for more than 80 years, and it’s driven by independent thinking and rigorous research. So our clients can be confident that we’ll strive to select the right investments as we help them achieve their objectives. Strategic investing means that we don’t stop at surface level analysis. Instead, we go beyond the numbers. Our investment professionals travel the world, visiting the companies they evaluate. It’s this passion for exploration and understanding that has helped inform better decision-making and prudent risk management for our clients since its founding by Thomas Rowe Price Jr. in 1937.
