Director of Engineering, AI Frontiers

RBC; Toronto; Hybrid; CAD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus plan

Flexible benefits

Stock options

Leaders who support development

World-class training

Challenging work

Job summary

RBC in Toronto seeks a Director of Engineering, AI Frontiers to lead a small team evaluating frontier AI technologies for enterprise adoption. The role blends management with hands-on work on agentic systems, multimodal models, and AI tooling, ensuring security and data governance are embedded from the start.

You will produce prototypes, evaluation reports, and evidence-backed recommendations for executive audiences while translating complex findings for non-technical stakeholders in a regulated

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering with 3+ in a lead/management role.
• Hands-on experience building/evaluating AI systems, including LLM/agentic pipelines and RAG.
• Ability to track frontier AI developments and translate findings for stakeholders.
• Experience operating in regulated environments with security/compliance constraints.
• Strong communication to non-technical leaders.

Responsibilities

• Manage and mentor a team of AI engineers across evaluation, prototyping, and tooling.
• Lead hands-on technical evaluations of frontier AI capabilities, including agentic systems and multimodal models.
• Build working prototypes tested against real business scenarios and enterprise constraints.
• Establish and maintain sandbox environments for rapid evaluation with risk/security alignment.
• Build and operate tooling supporting the evaluation pipeline from intake to results review.
• Partner with security, architecture, and risk to embed constraints from the start.
• Translate technical findings into clear, evidence-backed recommendations for business leaders.
• Represent engineering in Radar publications and executive briefings.
• Ensure evaluations are reproducible with documented methodology and data.

Skills

Leadership

AI systems

LLM/Agentic/RAG

Regulated environments

Communication

Prototyping & evaluation

Tools

Evaluation tooling

Sandbox environments

Prototyping platforms

Job description

Job Description

The Director of Engineering, AI Frontiers is a hybrid management/IC role that leads a small team of AI engineers in evaluating frontier AI technologies for enterprise adoption. The person manages evaluations and prototyping of agentic systems, multimodal models, and AI tooling against real business scenarios while embedding security, compliance, and data governance constraints from the start. They produce working prototypes, reproducible evaluation reports, and evidence-backed recommendations communicated through Radar publications and executive briefings. The role requires 8+ years of engineering experience with 3+ in a lead/management capacity, hands-on LLM/agentic/RAG experience, comfort tracking the frontier, and the ability to translate technical findings for non-technical stakeholders in regulated environments.

WHAT IS THE OPPORTUNITY?

The AI Frontiers team exists to close the gap between frontier AI capabilities and enterprise adoption. The gap is real: frontier models, agentic platforms, and AI-native tooling advance on a weekly cycle. Internal adoption moves on a quarterly or annual one. The team's mandate is to scan the landscape at the speed it moves, evaluate what matters with enterprise rigor, prove business value through hands-on prototypes, and produce findings that pull adoption from business lines.

WHAT WILL YOU DO?

• Manage and mentor a team of AI engineers across evaluation, prototyping, and tooling work
• Lead hands-on technical evaluations of frontier AI capabilities, including agentic systems, multimodal models, reasoning systems, and AI development tooling
• Build working prototypes that test capabilities against real business scenarios and enterprise constraints, including security, data governance, and integration requirements
• Establish and maintain sandbox environments for rapid evaluation, validated with risk and security, activated on demand
• Build and operate the tooling that supports the evaluation pipeline: intake, triage, design, execution, and results review
• Partner with liaisons in security, architecture, and risk to embed enterprise constraints into evaluation design from the start, not as an afterthought
• Translate technical findings into clear, evidence-backed recommendations that business-line leaders can act on
• Represent the engineering perspective in Radar publications, field work sessions, and executive briefings
• Ensure evaluations are reproducible: methodology, test scenarios, data, and results documented to a standard that a peer could independently assess

WHAT DO YOU NEED TO SUCCEED?

Must have:

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with 3+ years in a technical lead or engineering management role
• Practical experience building and evaluating AI systems, including LLM-based applications, agentic pipelines, and RAG architectures
• Comfort working at the frontier: you follow model releases, track agentic frameworks, and have opinions about what matters and what is hype
• Strong engineering judgment: you know when to build a prototype in a day and when depth is warranted
• Ability to communicate technical findings in plain language to non-technical stakeholders
• Experience working in or alongside highly regulated environments, with direct exposure to security, compliance, or governance constraints

Nice-to-have:

• Experience evaluating or benchmarking AI models and systems against defined success criteria
• Background in financial services
• Familiarity with enterprise integration patterns, data platforms, or platform engineering
• Public writing, presentations, or open-source contributions in the AI space

What's in it for you?

We thrive on the challenge to be our best, progressive thinking to keep growing, and working together to deliver trusted advice to help our clients thrive and communities prosper. We care about each other, reaching our potential, making a difference to our communities, and achieving success that is mutual.

• A comprehensive Total Rewards Program including bonuses and flexible benefits, competitive compensation, commissions, and stock where applicable
• Leaders who support your development through coaching and managing opportunities
• Ability to make a difference and lasting impact
• Work in a dynamic, collaborative, progressive, and high-performing team
• A world-class training program in financial services
• Opportunities to do challenging work.

Job Skills

Big Data Analytics, Client Counseling, Coaching Others, Critical Thinking, Decision Making, Industry Knowledge, Machine Learning (ML), Results-Oriented, Software Engineering, Software Product Design

Additional Job Details

Address:

RBC WATERPARK PLACE, 88 QUEENS QUAY W:TORONTO

City:

Toronto

Country:

Canada

Work hours/week:

37.5

Employment Type:

Full time

Platform:

TECHNOLOGY AND OPERATIONS

Job Type:

Regular

Pay Type:

Salaried

Posted Date:

2026-08-21

Application Deadline:

2026-09-15

Note** :**

Applications will be accepted until 11:59 PM on the day prior to the application deadline date above

Our Employment Opportunities

At RBC, we are guided by living shared values of Client First, Integrity, Collaboration, Respect and Excellence and winning together as One RBC. We believe an inclusive workplace that has diverse perspectives is core to our continued growth as one of the largest and most successful banks in the world. Maintaining a workplace where our employees feel supported to perform at their best, effectively collaborate, drive innovation, and grow professionally helps to bring our Purpose to life and create value for our clients and communities. RBC strives to deliver this through policies and programs intended to foster a workplace based on respect, belonging and opportunity for all.