AI Platform Director- Data Engineering

First Citizens Bank; Phoenix (AZ); Remote; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

First Citizens Bank is seeking an experienced Director to lead the AI platform engineering and enablement functions within our Cloud Data and AI Platform organization. You will own end-to-end AI lifecycle, from data and model development to MLOps, deployment, governance, and responsible AI compliance in a regulated environment.

As a senior technology leader, you will drive enterprise AI architecture, platform scalability, and collaboration with risk, legal, and governance teams to deliver

Qualifications

• Deep hands-on experience building production ML systems on AWS.
• 2+ years in AI/ML, data science, or data engineering leadership roles.
• Strong knowledge of ML, MLOps, distributed systems, and cloud architecture.
• Experience in regulated environments with model governance and auditability.
• Excellent leadership and cross-functional collaboration capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Architect and lead AI/ML workloads on AWS, including SageMaker and Bedrock.
• Define enterprise MLOps standards and model lifecycle management.
• Collaborate with risk, legal, compliance and governance teams for Responsible AI.
• Drive data quality, feature engineering standards, and data product governance.
• Mentor engineering leaders and oversee vendor relations for AI tools.

Skills

Leadership

Enterprise AI architecture

Regulatory compliance

Stakeholder collaboration

Strategy

Education

Bachelor's degree in IT / related field

High School Diploma or GED with extensive IT experience

Tools

AWS SageMaker

AWS Bedrock

AWS Lambda

ECS / EKS

S3 / Glue / Snowflake

Python / SQL

Job description

Overview

This is a remote role that may only be hired in the following location(s): North Carolina or Arizona

We are seeking an experienced Director to lead the AI platform engineering and enablement functions within our expanding Cloud Data and AI Platform organization. This role is instrumental in building, operationalizing, and governing the next-generation AI and machine learning ecosystem that powers advanced analytics and responsible AI adoption across the bank. You will own the end-to-end AI lifecycle-from data and model development to MLOps, deployment, governance, and responsible AI compliance in a regulated financial environment.

As a seasoned technology leader, you will bring yourexpertisein enterprise AI architecture, model operations, and platform engineering to partner with key business, technology, and governance stakeholders-ensuring AI initiatives are responsibly implemented, well-controlled, and deliver measurable value.

Responsibilities & Qualifications

AWS AI/ML Platform Ownership

• Architect and lead AI/ML workloads on AWS including:
  • Amazon SageMaker (training, deployment, model registry)
  • AWS Bedrock (foundation models and GenAI use cases)
  • AWS Lambda, ECS, EKS for model serving
  • S3, Glue, Snowflake for data pipelines
• Define enterprise standards for MLOps, feature stores, and model lifecycle management
• Build andmaintainintegrationswith enterprise platforms for data ingestion, metadata management, tokenization, and control evidence generation.

• Continuously enhance the platform's automation, resilience, and observability, ensuring robust end-to-end telemetry for both model and data pipelines.
• Collaboratewith Enterprise Risk, Legal, Compliance, and Model Risk partners to embed Responsible AI principles and audit-ready control evidence directly into platform design.

Machine Learning & GenAI Execution

• Oversee development of ML models across all business units including Fraud detection systems, Credit scoring and risk modeling, Customer segmentation and personalization, Liquidity related modeling etc.
• Lead GenAI initiatives using LLMs for Document intelligence, AI copilots etc.

Data & Engineering Collaboration

• Partner with data engineering teams to ensure high-quality, governed datasets
• Define feature engineering and data product standards in Snowflake / data lake environments
• Integrate real-time streaming data for low-latency decision systems

Model Governance & Risk Compliance

• Define and enforce standards, patterns, and guardrailsfor model deployment, explainability, lineage, and monitoring in alignment with enterprise risk, compliance, and security frameworks.
• Partner closelywith leaders across Responsible AI Governance, AI Portfolio Management, AI Fluency & Engagement, and Applied Data Science & GenAI, incollaborationwith enterprise risk partners, to implement a responsible AI framework that embeds audit-ready control evidence and governance mechanisms directly into the platform's core design to ensurethe platform supports scalable, ethical,compliant,and high-impact AI delivery.
• Implement model explainability (SHAP, LIME, interpretability frameworks)
• Establish responsible AI policies (bias detection, fairness, auditability)

Team Building & Leadership

• Develop and mentor engineering talent, championing Agile practices, continuous learning, and adoption of emerging AI and data engineering technologies.
• Mentor senior technical leaders and establish engineering best practices
• Oversee technical due diligence, onboarding, and management of strategic AI and GenAI vendors and tools, ensuring compatibility with enterprise architecture and control.

Bachelor's Degree and 8 years of experience in Information Technology including application development, support roles, and management.

OR

High School Diploma or GED and 12 years of experience in Information Technology including application development, support roles, and management.

Qualifications

• Deep hands-on experience building production ML systems on AWS
• 2+ years in AI/ML, data science, or data engineering leadership roles
• Strong knowledge of:
  • Machine learning (XGBoost, deep learning, NLP, time series)
  • MLOps practices (CI/CD, model monitoring, drift detection)
  • Distributed systems and cloud architecture
• Strong programming background in Python + SQL (Scala/Java a plus)
• Experience working in regulated environments with model governance

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Generative AI / LLM platforms (Bedrock, OpenAI, Claude APIs)
• Experience in financial services, banking, fintech, or insurance
• Familiarity with data platforms like Snowflake, Databricks

#LI-JM1

Additional Information

Benefits are an integral part of total rewards and First Citizens Bank is committed to providing a competitive, thoughtfully designed and quality benefits program to meet the needs of our associates. More information can be found at https://jobs.firstcitizens.com/benefits.