Lead AI, Operating Model Design

MetLife; Cary (NC); Hybrid; USD 130,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) match

Life insurance

Disability insurance

Paid time off

Tuition assistance

Parental leave

Job summary

MetLife is seeking a Lead, Operating Model Design to shape AI‑first delivery for Global Technology. You’ll craft team archetypes, role definitions, and transition artifacts for CIO organizations and guide execution with delivery leaders.

The role blends design authority with hands‑on enablement, working inside MetLife Global Technology to redefine operating standards and governance for AI‑augmented delivery across large enterprises.

Qualifications

• Hands‑on experience with agentic AI frameworks and real delivery workflows.
• 8+ years in enterprise architecture or operating‑model consulting, including regulated environments.
• Designs that outlived a single tooling generation and can be defended to CIO leadership.

Responsibilities

• Design roles, accountability, and governance for AI‑augmented delivery.
• Create archetypes and interaction patterns for AI‑augmented teams.
• Define human‑agent operating design, escalation, and accountability.
• Collaborate with enterprise leaders to incorporate field feedback into the model.
• Produce reference artifacts like decision‑rights matrices and operating cadences.
• Validate designs with delivery teams to ensure practical adoption.

Skills

Agentic AI frameworks

Enterprise architecture

Operating-model design

Regulated environments

Job description

Role Value Proposition

As Lead, Operating Model Design, you will serve as an internal consultant and operating model designer for Global Technology’s AI-First operating model. You author the team archetypes, role and accountability frameworks, and transition-design artifacts that CIO organizations implement, then support execution through facilitation, process design, and feedback from delivery leaders. This is a specialist individual-contributor role: your impact comes from design that large organizations can adopt and keep using as tooling evolves.

The Opportunity

As Lead, Operating Model Design, you will serve as an internal consultant and operating model designer for Global Technology’s AI-First operating model. You author the team archetypes, role and accountability frameworks, and transition-design artifacts that CIO organizations implement, then support execution through facilitation, process design, and feedback from delivery leaders. This is a specialist individual-contributor role: your impact comes from design that large organizations can adopt and keep using as tooling evolves.

About the team

DST is an individual-contributor team inside MetLife Global Technology, working directly with CIO organizations, Enterprise DevSecOps, Platform Engineering, and Enterprise Architecture. GitHub Enterprise and the agentic SDLC toolchain are being made productive now, and the AI-First Operating Model is being designed and proven in live delivery — this role shapes it rather than inherits it.

• What is changing: Global Technology is moving to an AI-first delivery model — agents performing delivery work alongside people, specifications and curated context replacing tribal knowledge, and review, traceability, and control points rebuilt around output that people and agents produce together.
• Why this role matters: the work of this team will redefine how teams plan, build, review, govern, and deliver technology in an AI-first environment — the roles people hold, the decision rights they carry, and the accountabilities that hold when an agent does the work. This role authors the design that change runs on, and the organizations implementing it work from what you produce.

Key Responsibilities

• Work AI-first in your own design practice — using AI to accelerate research, options analysis, artifact drafting, and stress-testing. Design credibility here depends on operating the way the target model expects others to operate.
• Author and maintain team archetypes and interaction patterns for AI-augmented delivery — team composition, AI integration level, and how teams interact across the delivery flow.
• Design role and accountability frameworks for the target operating model — role definitions, decision rights, skill expectations, and progression paths — aligned with the enterprise job family framework.
• Define the human‑agent operating design — what people retain and what is delegated to agents, where human‑above‑the‑loop review applies, and how accountability and escalation work when an agent acts — together with the governance and control points for agent‑participating delivery, designed with Risk, Audit, Enterprise DevSecOps, and Platform Engineering.
• Set the design standards that keep operating‑model decisions consistent across CIO organizations — when each archetype applies, what may be adapted locally, and where deviation requires approval — so organizations can make their own choices without escalating each one.
• Design the end‑to‑end lifecycle architecture that connects the PDLC and SDLC into one flow from product intent to running code, reconciled with MetLife Enterprise Architecture standards.
• Design the transition from today’s delivery model to the AI-First target state — sequencing, dependency mapping, and phasing, together with the stakeholder impacts, role transition paths, and enablement requirements each archetype creates.
• Collaborate with enterprise delivery leaders, portfolio organizations, and advisory teams to incorporate field feedback, evaluate model effectiveness, and align future‑state improvements with practical delivery realities.
• Produce the reference implementation artifacts CIO organizations work from — decision‑rights matrices, operating cadences, and worked examples of the model applied to a real delivery context — validated with delivery teams so adoption does not depend on interpreting the design.

Required Qualifications

• Hands‑on experience with agentic AI frameworks — how agents are configured, orchestrated, permissioned, and evaluated in real delivery workflows. You do not need to have built the platform, but you do need enough direct working experience to design roles, accountabilities, oversight models, and team archetypes for agent‑participating delivery rather than describe them abstractly.
• 8+ years in enterprise architecture or operating‑model / organizational‑design consulting, including regulated‑enterprise experience.
• Operating‑model and role‑framework design for large technology organizations, with design work that outlived a single tooling or methodology generation — and the command to defend that design to CIO leadership and the organizations expected to implement it.
• Design‑level knowledge of flow‑based delivery systems and modern Agile ways of working — Scaled Agile (SAFe) or comparable frameworks, the product operating model, Lean and Kanban — deep enough to take apart and rebuild, including where each breaks down under AI‑augmented delivery, plus experience designing lifecycle architecture that reconciles with enterprise architecture standards and platform constraints.
• Experience designing governance, controls, and human‑accountability models for regulated delivery — approval gates, decision rights, and evidence capture — including how agent‑executed work is documented so risk and audit partners can review it.

Preferred Qualifications

• Adoption and readiness experience applied to structural change — role‑transition design, stakeholder impact analysis, communication planning, and adoption sequencing — with designs that survived contact with the organizations expected to implement them.
• Experience working in a large enterprise organization of 1,000+ technologists and in regulated environments.
• Formal grounding in an organizational design, adoption, or change methodology — Team Topologies, sociotechnical systems design, Prosci, or equivalent — and experience defining readiness and measurement models that show whether a change took hold.
• Experience guiding an organization through a product operating‑model transition, including the period when the previous model and the target model are both in effect.
• Relevant certifications — SAFe, Scrum, Kanban, PMI‑ACP, Prosci, TOGAF, GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Azure AI, or comparable — and a bachelor’s degree in a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Location Expectation

This is a hybrid role requiring a minimum of 3 days per week in office.

Salary

The expected salary range for this position is $130,000 - $160,000. This role may also be eligible for annual short-term incentive compensation. All incentives and benefits are subject to the applicable plan terms.

Benefits We Offer

Our U.S. benefits address holistic well‑being with programs for physical and mental health, financial wellness, and support for families. We offer a comprehensive health plan that includes medical/prescription drug and vision, dental insurance, and no‑cost short‑and‑long‑term disability. We also provide company‑paid life insurance and legal services, a retirement pension funded entirely by MetLife and 401(k) with employer matching, group discounts on voluntary insurance products including auto and home, pet, critical illness, hospital indemnity, and accident insurance, as well as Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and digital mental health programs, parental leave, paid time off, paid holidays, volunteer time off, tuition assistance and much more!

About MetLife

Recognized on Fortune magazine's list of the "World's Most Admired Companies", Fortune World’s 25 Best Workplaces™, as well as the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For®, MetLife, through its subsidiaries and affiliates, is one of the world’s leading financial services companies; providing insurance, annuities, employee benefits and asset management to individual and institutional customers. With operations in more than 40 markets, we hold leading positions in the United States, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

As part of our New Frontier strategy, MetLife is building an AI‑enabled, people‑centered future. We’re looking for people who bring curiosity, adaptability, and a growth mindset as we use AI to enhance how we serve customers, support communities, and evolve the way work gets done. At MetLife, AI is a responsible partner that supports human judgment, creativity, and continuous improvement while helping us build trust, inclusion, and long‑term value.

Our purpose is simple - to help our colleagues, customers, communities, and the world at large create a more confident future. United by purpose and guided by our core values - Win Together, Do the Right Thing, Deliver Impact Over Activity, and Think Ahead - we’re inspired to transform the next century in financial services. At MetLife, it’s #AllTogetherPossible.

MetLife is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All employment decisions are made without regards to race, color, national origin, religion, creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, marital or domestic/civil partnership status, genetic information, citizenship status (although applicants and employees must be legally authorized to work in the United States), uniformed service member or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law (“protected characteristics”).

If you need an accommodation due to a disability, please email us at [e-mail]. This information will be held in confidence and used only to determine an appropriate accommodation for the application process.

MetLife maintains a drug‑free workplace.

It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liabilities.

This posting is for a current vacancy and is anticipated to remain open for at least 90 days from the listed posting date.