AI Engineer Lead, Application Development

First National Financial LP; Toronto; On-site; CAD 170,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Great location near transit

Benefits eligibility dependent on term

Job summary

First National Financial LP is seeking an AI Engineer Lead to shape AI-driven mortgage workflows. You will own architecture, standards, and production readiness for AI Factory solutions, guiding agentic workflows, document intelligence, retrieval augmented generation, and secure integration with core systems.

You will mentor engineers, establish reusable patterns, and partner with stakeholders to align architecture with risk, cost, privacy, and value.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering or related discipline.
• 8+ years of progressive technology experience in software engineering, solution architecture or data engineering.
• Experience delivering production AI or generative AI capabilities (agents, RAG, document intelligence, model serving).
• Strong practical experience with Microsoft Azure, Databricks and modern secure software delivery practices.
• Familiarity with MLflow, Unity Catalog, Lakeflow, Delta Lake, Vector Search and related AI tooling.
• Ability to translate architecture choices into product, risk, cost, privacy and operational value.

Responsibilities

• Lead target architecture for AI-enabled workflow automation with Databricks and Azure foundations.
• Define reusable solution patterns for DocumentAI, PolicyAI, retrieval-augmented generation and multi-agent orchestration.
• Guide designs using Databricks components and Azure services for security and governance.
• Set engineering standards across languages and delivery tooling (Python, SQL, .NET, TypeScript, CI/CD, Terraform).
• Establish production readiness gates including UAT, test suites, and audit logging.
• Ensure code and data contracts are maintainable by First National teams.
• Coach engineers on applied AI architecture and reusable patterns.

Skills

AI architecture

Technical leadership

Cloud security

Stakeholder communication

Problem solving

Education

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering or related discipline

Tools

Databricks

Azure

MLflow

Unity Catalog

Lakeflow

Delta Lake

Vector Search

Azure OpenAI Service

Service Bus

API Management

Key Vault

Entra ID

Azure Monitor

Log Analytics

GitHub

Azure DevOps

Terraform

Job description

We are hiring an AI Engineer Lead, Application Development

Reporting To

AVP, Application Development

Full-Time/Part- Time

Full-time

Posting Date

August 10, 2026

Closing Date

August 28, 2026

Hours Of Work

8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Grade

Office Location:

16.4

Toronto, ON

Great location! Steps away from the main public transit station

What We Offer

Highly competitive compensation package which includes, base salary, bonus, benefits, and career advancement opportunities!

• Eligibility for benefits is dependent on the terms of employment

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

• Office environment
• 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.

Why join First National?

• 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 equal opportunity 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.