Lead AI Engineer

Description and Requirements
Introduction
Are you passionate about harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and data science to solve real-world business challenges? Do you thrive on building robust, scalable capabilities that deliver measurable value? We are seeking a skilled and motivated Lead AI Engineer to help develop advanced AI platform capabilities that will power our enterprise solutions.
About the Role
As a Lead AI Engineer, you will provide hands-on technical leadership in the design, development, and operation of production AI and Generative AI systems within a regulated, enterprise environment. You will own technical architecture and implementation decisions for AI solutions within a defined business domain, ensuring solutions are scalable, reliable, and compliant with governance and risk standards.
You will work closely with data engineering, platform engineering, DevOps, product, and business stakeholders to translate business requirements into robust AI solutions. This is a lead technical role focused on system delivery and operational excellence, rather than people management or enterprise-wide strategy.
Key Responsibilities

• AI Platform Capability Development: Design, develop, and manage scalable enterprise AI capabilities that support the AI platform.
• Model Engineering: Design, train, and optimize machine learning and deep learning models for a variety of business use cases (e.g., SLM, computer vision, predictive analytics, recommendation systems).
• Platform Integration: Enable seamless integration of AI capabilities into business applications and workflows through APIs, SDKs, and microservices.
• Performance & Scalability: Optimize platform components for efficiency, scalability, and reliability using best practices in distributed computing, resource management, and cloud-native architectures.
• Define and track model performance, drift, bias, and GenAI evaluation metrics to ensure reliability and quality.
• Innovation & Research: Stay abreast of the latest trends and advancements in AI, ML, and platform engineering. Evaluate and prototype emerging technologies for inclusion in the enterprise platform.

Core Competencies

• Technical Excellence: Ability to design and lead robust, production-grade AI and GenAI systems using modern engineering and MLOps principles.
• Delivery Focus: Strong orientation toward hands-on implementation while owning end-to-end delivery, quality, and operational readiness of AI solutions.
• Collaboration: Proven ability to work cross-functionally with business, data, platform, risk, and operations teams to deliver compliant AI solutions.
• Innovation: Evaluate and apply emerging AI technologies pragmatically, balancing innovation with reliability, cost, and regulatory constraints.
• Ownership: Accountability for technical decisions, project outcomes, timelines, and production stability within a defined domain.
• Ethics & Governance: Commitment to responsible and ethical AI, including fairness, transparency, explainability, and adherence to regulatory and model risk standards.

Required Skills:

• Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, Data Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field.
• 8+ years of overall experience with 4+ years in AI/ML engineering, data science.
• Proven experience designing, deploying, and operating production ML and GenAI solutions, including APIs, batch, and real-time inference.
• Strong software engineering skills with experience in Python (required).
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Proven experience designing, developing, and deploying Generative AI (GenAI) solutions using large language models (LLMs) such as GPT, Llama, Claude, etc.
• Strong understanding of prompt engineering, SLM fine-tuning, and evaluation of generative models for real-world applications.
• Familiarity with best practices for responsible AI, including data privacy, bias mitigation, and model monitoring.

Preferred Skills:

• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and orchestration tools.
• 2+ years in GenAI.
• Hands-on expertise with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures, including integrating external data sources and vector databases to enhance LLM outputs.
• Strong understanding of prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and evaluation of generative models for real-world applications.
• Ability to build, optimize, and scale GenAI pipelines for tasks such as document Q&A, summarization, chatbots, and knowledge retrieval.

Location Expectation: This is a hybrid role requiring a minimum of 3 days per week in office.
The expected salary range for this position is $110,000 - $188,200. This role may also be eligible for annual short-term incentive compensation. 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 "World's Most Admired Companies", Fortune World's 25 Best Workplaces™, as well as the 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 our core values - Win Together, Do the Right Thing, Deliver Impact Over Activity, and Think Ahead - we're inspired to transform the next century in financial services. At MetLife, it's #AllTogetherPossible . Join us!
MetLife is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All employment decisions are made without regards to race, color, national origin, religion, creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, marital or domestic/civil partnership status, genetic information, citizenship status (although applicants and employees must be legally authorized to work in the United States), uniformed service member or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law ("protected characteristics").
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.
$110,000 - $188,200
#BI-Hybrid