AI Engineer Lead, Application Development

First National Financial; Toronto; On-site; CAD 130,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Spending Account

Maternity and Parental Leave Top Up

Extensive training programs

Modern office environment

Supportive teamwork culture

Job summary

First National Financial seeks an AI Engineering Lead to own architecture, standards, and production readiness for AI Factory solutions that enhance mortgage workflows and user experience.

You will provide hands-on technical leadership for agentic workflows, document and policy intelligence, retrieval augmented generation, deterministic automation, model evaluation, observability, and secure integration with core mortgage systems.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering or related discipline.
• 8+ years of progressive technology experience in software/solution architecture, data/AI platforms.
• Experience delivering production AI capabilities including agents, RAG, document intelligence, model serving, and prompt lifecycle management.
• Strong practical experience with Azure, Databricks, Python, SQL, APIs, CI/CD, and infrastructure as code.

Responsibilities

• Lead target architecture for AI-enabled workflow automation on Databricks and Azure.
• Define reusable patterns for DocumentAI, PolicyAI, retrieval-augmented generation, agent/tool integration, multi-agent orchestration, deterministic rules engines, calculation services, and regulator write-back.
• Guide designs using Lakeflow, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Vector Search, MLflow tracing, and Databricks Model Serving.
• Establish production readiness gates for AI use cases including UAT, test suites, guardrails, privacy safeguards, access control, audit logging, rollback planning, and runbooks.

Skills

AI architecture

Leadership

Cloud computing

Databricks experience

Azure experience

Education

Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related discipline

Tools

Azure

Databricks

Python

SQL

CI/CD

Infrastructure as Code

Job description

16 York St, Toronto, ON, Canada

Job Description

Posted Monday, August 10, 2026 at 4:00 a.m. | Expires Saturday, August 29, 2026 at 3:59 a.m.

The Opportunity

The AI Engineering Lead is responsible for the architecture, engineering standards, and production readiness of AI Factory solutions that enhance mortgage workflows, productivity, decision quality, and user experience.

This role provides hands on technical leadership for agentic workflows, document and policy intelligence, retrieval augmented generation, deterministic automation, model evaluation, observability, and secure integration with core mortgage systems. The Lead ensures FN’s workflow logic, business rules, calculations, and integration contracts remain independent from external model providers and platforms.

How you will contribute

• Lead target architecture for AI enabled workflow automation, using Databricks as the governed data, evaluation, registry, and monitoring backbone and Azure as the enterprise foundation for identity, security, connectivity, hosting, and controls.
• Define reusable solution patterns for DocumentAI, PolicyAI, retrieval-augmented generation, agent/tool integration, multi-agent orchestration, deterministic rules engines, calculation services, human review queues, exception handling, audit evidence, and controlled write-back to core systems.
• Guide designs using Lakeflow, Delta Lake bronze, silver, and gold layers, Unity Catalog, Vector Search, MLflow tracing and evaluation, model and prompt registries, Databricks Model Serving, Azure AI Document Intelligence, Azure OpenAI Service, Service Bus, API Management, Key Vault, Entra ID, Azure Monitor, and Log Analytics.
• Set engineering standards for Python, SQL, .NET, TypeScript, FastAPI, React or Blazor integration surfaces, Git based delivery, CI/CD, automated testing, Terraform, data quality checks, model evaluation, prompt governance, observability, cost monitoring, and release controls.
• Establish production readiness gates for AI use cases, including UAT, representative test suites, confidence thresholds, guardrails, privacy safeguards, access control, audit logging, rollback planning, kill switches, incident response, runbooks, and operational support.
• Challenge vendor designs, reduce throwaway work, and ensure code, prompts, data contracts, tests, documentation, and runbooks can be owned, operated, and extended by First National.
• Coach engineers and partner teams on applied AI architecture, LLMOps, secure AI delivery, production support, and reusable patterns that can scale beyond the first residential underwriting use cases.

The experience you need

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering or a related discipline.
• 8 plus years of progressive technology experience, including software engineering, solution architecture, data engineering, machine learning engineering, or platform engineering.
• Experience designing and delivering production AI or generative AI capabilities, including agents, RAG, document intelligence, model serving, prompt lifecycle management, evaluation harnesses, observability, and human in the loop controls.
• Strong practical experience with Microsoft Azure, Databricks or comparable data and AI platforms, Python, SQL, APIs, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, GitHub or Azure DevOps, and modern secure software delivery practices.
• Working knowledge of MLflow, Unity Catalog, Lakeflow, Delta Lake, Vector Search, Azure AI Document Intelligence, Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Service Bus, API Management, Key Vault, Entra ID, Azure Monitor, and FinOps is strongly preferred.
• Ability to translate architecture choices into product, risk, cost, privacy, operational, and value tradeoffs for senior stakeholders.
• Experience in financial services, mortgage lending, lending operations, servicing, broker channels, third party partnerships, or regulated technology environments is preferred.

Relationships

External Customers : Engages implementation partners, cloud providers, data and AI platform providers, and specialist vendors to support solution quality, production readiness, and knowledge transfer.

Internal Customers: Partners with Product, Engineering, Data, Security, Risk, Compliance, business operations, and technology governance teams to deliver controlled AI capabilities with measurable value.

Working Environment and Physical Demands Analysis

• Periods of high volume with tight timelines
• Long periods of stationary position/sitting
• Prolonged periods of repetitive movement (i.e. using a keyboard and mouse)
• Long periods of time in viewing a computer screen
• Multi-tasking may include speaking to customers on a telephone call while looking up information on a computer program.
• Competitive Compensation
• Comprehensive benefits program (i.e., Health Spending Account, Maternity and Parental Leave Top Up)
• Extensive training programs to set our employees up for success
• Modern office environment conducive to collaboration
• Supportive teamwork culture
• Opportunities to give back to the communities and work through events focused on a variety of charities
• Ongoing social events throughout the year

The team you’ll join

Founded in 1988, First National is one of Canada’s largest non-bank lenders. We provide residential mortgages exclusively through the mortgage broker channel and we are Canada’s largest commercial mortgage lender.

First National has been consistently recognized as a great place to work and we are proud that our employee engagement feedback is higher than our industry partners.

We would like to thank all applications for their interest in this existing vacancy, but only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.

Artificial Intelligence is not used in our recruitment or hiring process for this role.

First National is proud to be an equalopportunity employer and is committed to diversity and inclusion regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, age, gender identity, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation and any other category protected by law.

First National supports requests for accommodation from applicants with disabilities; please contact Human Resources at [e-mail] should you need an accommodation at any point in the recruitment process.