Director, Emerging Technology

Finance of America Holdings; United States; On-site; USD 165,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Finance of America Holdings is seeking a senior leader to advance innovation programs across AI and data science. You will guide strategy, manage budgets, and coordinate cross-functional teams to deliver high-impact technology solutions.

The role requires extensive risk management and a proven track record in senior leadership within financial services. You will collaborate with Legal, Privacy, and Risk teams to ensure compliant adoption of emerging technologies, while driving measurable

Qualifications

• A minimum of 10 years in risk management, AI, and IT with 10 years of progressive management experience.
• Experience at senior levels in adaptive environments within financial services preferred.
• Strong budgeting, vendor selection, and strategic planning capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Leads and manages resources across multiple Innovation programs including Data Science, ML, and AI.
• Balances long-range planning with budget management and tactical solutions that reduce friction.
• Oversees data operations within risk and privacy frameworks.
• Provides strategic leadership to Emerging Tech Programs across Finance of America Companies.
• Advises senior management on information systems to ensure best-practice controls.
• Leads compliance and risk initiatives with stakeholders to align with SOX ITGC and FFIEC.

Skills

Risk management

AI

Information technology

Senior management

Budget management

Education

Bachelor's Degree

Master’s Degree

Job description

Responsible for advancing Finance of America’s proficiency with and adoption of innovative new technologies, including generative AI, by leveraging emerging tech in a way that optimizes cost and realizes tangible business results for program stakeholders across the company. Also responsible for the exploration, scoping, and cost modeling of emergent solutions.

Key Responsibilities and Expectations

• Leads and manages resources across multiple Innovation programs including, but not limited to Data Science, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence.
• Supports the enterprise strategy through a balance of long-range planning and objectives, budget management, vendor selection, and tactical solutions that immediately reduce friction in core data engineering and access disciplines or otherwise add direct and tangible business value.
• Oversees and fuses comprehensive data operations programs into the risk and privacy frameworks that surround them.
• Provides strategic leadership to the Emerging Tech Programs across Finance of America Companies to ensure consistent and high-quality emerging technology management in support of sustain, optimize, and transform business objectives.
• Serves as an expert advisor to senior management in the development, implementation, and maintenance of information systems to ensure best practice control objectives are achieved in protecting information assets.
• Leads Innovation compliance and risk initiatives with stakeholders across technology teams and business units to drive awareness of, and compliance with, SOX IT General Controls and FFIEC best practices.
• Facilitates a metrics and reporting framework to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of the program, including success measures for experimental tech use cases and pilot programs.
• Deploys and leverages available resource allocation optimally, and increases, through waved iterations, the maturity of the Emerging Technology Program, reviewing it with all relevant stakeholders across the business as it matures over time.
• Designs, implements, and monitors a comprehensive innovation vision and strategy that is aligned to organizational priorities and enables the organization's business objectives as defined in its Objective Key Result (OKR) framework or otherwise expressed.
• Exposes the corporate environment to use cases that can facilitate process optimization, data mining, marketing campaigns, or other areas relevant to core business operations.
• Empowers Finance of America Companies’ pursuit of effective technology selection programs through the direct reduction of cost or the contribution to growth.
• Communicates Emerging Technology goals, vision, strategy, and polices across Finance of America Companies in partnership with Legal, Privacy, 2nd Line Risk Management, the Technology Risk Management Team and a broad cross-section of business partners as well as the general user population.
• Creates and champions working groups or other coalition models to socialize complex topics with and build support for pilot use cases of emerging tech and measured risk tolerance for tactical solutions.
• Leads the Innovation Program, actively identifying, evaluating, and implementing emerging technologies to bolster corporate capabilities and create business advantages.
• Collaborates with the corporate legal and risk teams to develop processes and policies, ensuring a balanced approach to integrating new technology while addressing inherent regulatory concerns.
• Serves as a subject matter expert on various emerging technology topics, providing reliable advice and consultation to senior leadership.
• Leverages data science techniques and tools to generate insights and solutions from various sources of data, such as internal databases, external APIs, web scraping, or natural language processing.
• Develops and deploys data-driven products and services that enhance Finance of America Companies' operational efficiency, customer satisfaction, and competitive edge.
• Establishes best practices and standards for data science projects, ensuring ethical, secure, and scalable use of data across the organization.
• Applies machine learning techniques and algorithms to create, train, and evaluate predictive models that can support various business functions and decisions.
• Utilizes various frameworks and platforms to implement machine learning solutions, such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, AWS SageMaker, or Azure Machine Learning.
• Keeps abreast of the latest developments and trends in machine learning research and practice, and identifies opportunities for innovation and improvement.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Reports To

• SVP, Chief Data Officer

Direct Reports

• Emerging Technologies Specialists (2) and Data Scientist Sr

Qualifications - Experience/Skills/Competencies

• A minimum of 10 years of risk management, AI, and information technology fields, with 10 years of progressive management experience, including 4 years in a senior management role required. 10 years demonstrated senior corporate leadership experience, ideally in building programs across a diversified organization preferred.
• Experience functioning at senior levels in adaptive, evolving environments across financial services preferred.
• Project management experience with excellent analytical/problem solving skills.
• Experience managing large budgets and identifying cost efficiencies.
• Knowledge of key U.S. laws and regulations relating to financial services technology and artificial intelligence
• Knowledge of a wide range of technologies and how to best leverage them at enterprise scale to achieve strategic objectives that drive enterprise business outcomes.
• Understanding of technologies underpinning the lending process.
• Ability to pivot abruptly to try new ideas, discard underperforming concepts in flight, and modify the functional model of the program itself to account for new technological developments or business circumstance.
• Appetite for exploring new solutions in industry, both commercial and open source.
• Strong decision-making capabilities, with a proven ability to weigh the relative costs and benefits of potential actions and identify the most appropriate action(s).
• Ability to take initiative, work autonomously, and drive projects forward to completion while prioritizing effectively, managing multiple matters, and meeting deadlines.
• Ability to present complex material in an easily understandable format (written or oral) and communicate effectively across groups, including executives, with varying levels of technology knowledge to build effective partnerships with open communication
• Highly motivated with an ability to manage open-ended challenges and comfortable working amidst structural uncertainty to bring order and process where there is none.
• Ability to stay abreast of rapidly changing technologies and ideas across the lending space.

Qualifications - Education – Required

• Bachelor's Degree

Qualifications - Education – Preferred

• Master’s Degree

Qualifications - Education - Field(s)/Profession(s)

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, or related field preferred.

Compensation

The base salary range for this position is ($165,000 - $190,000) inclusive of all geographical differences in the labor market. The base salary for the position will be determined based on factors such as the candidate’s work location, skills, education, and experience. In addition to those factors, we believe in the importance of pay equity and consider the internal equity of our current team members in determining any final offer. We offer a competitive benefits package including health, dental, vision, life insurance, paid time-off benefits, flexible spending account, 401(k) with employer match, and ESPP.

Additional Information

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by people assigned to this classification. They are not to be construed as an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required of personnel so classified.

Incenteris an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, religion, creed, age, national origin, physical or mental disability, gender identity and/or expression, marital status, veteran status or other characteristics protected by law.

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Licenses & Certifications

Equal Opportunity Employer
This employer is required to notify all applicants of their rights pursuant to federal employment laws.For further information, please review the Know Your Rights notice from the Department of Labor.