Principal AI Engineer

Heitmeyer Consulting; Charlotte (NC); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Heitmeyer Consulting, a leading financial services advisory, seeks a senior technology leader to drive modernization of risk, fraud, and compliance platforms. You will shape strategy, architecture, and engineering standards while working with business, risk, and tech stakeholders.

This role blends strategic leadership with hands-on engineering, requiring experience building large-scale enterprise systems, cloud-native designs, and AI-enabled solutions.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering, architecture, or technology leadership experience.
• Proven experience delivering large-scale enterprise systems.
• Experience leading architecture discussions and influencing technology strategy.
• Strong cloud-based and cloud-native solutions background.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences.

Responsibilities

• Define and guide long-term technology strategy for risk and compliance platforms.
• Lead architecture and design for AI-enabled applications and decisioning systems.
• Establish engineering standards, architectural patterns, and technology best practices.
• Review scalability, security, resiliency, and performance considerations.
• Mentor engineers and foster engineering excellence across the organization.
• Collaborate with business, risk, compliance, operations, and technology leaders.
• Translate business objectives into scalable technical solutions.
• Communicate technical strategy, architecture decisions, and modernization roadmaps to senior leadership.

Skills

Tech leadership

Enterprise architecture

Cloud-native

AI/ML

Stakeholder comms

Job description

A leading financial services organization is seeking a senior technology leader to help drive the modernization of its financial crime, fraud, and risk management technology platforms. This individual will play a key role in defining technical strategy, architecture, and engineering standards for next-generation solutions that leverage artificial intelligence, advanced analytics, and cloud technologies. The role combines strategic leadership with hands-on engineering responsibilities and requires close collaboration with business, risk, compliance, and technology stakeholders. The ideal candidate has deep experience designing large-scale enterprise platforms, a strong background in modern software architecture, and practical experience implementing AI-enabled solutions.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Define and guide long-term technology strategy for risk and compliance platforms.
• Lead architecture and design efforts for modern AI-enabled applications and decisioning systems.
• Establish engineering standards, architectural patterns, and technology best practices.
• Review and provide guidance on scalability, security, resiliency, and performance considerations.
• Serve as a senior technical advisor across multiple teams and initiatives.

AI & Advanced Analytics

• Design and implement AI-driven solutions that improve operational efficiency and decision-making.
• Evaluate and leverage modern AI technologies, including large language models, intelligent automation, knowledge retrieval, and workflow orchestration.
• Partner with data science and engineering teams to deploy machine learning and AI capabilities at scale.
• Help establish governance, monitoring, and operational best practices for AI-enabled applications.
• Contribute to solution design, prototyping, and proof-of-concept initiatives.
• Review and guide development efforts to ensure high-quality, maintainable solutions.
• Mentor engineers and foster engineering excellence across the organization.
• Promote automation, DevOps practices, testing, and continuous delivery.
• Help resolve complex technical challenges in large-scale enterprise environments.

Platform Modernization

• Lead modernization initiatives focused on cloud-native architectures and scalable platforms.
• Design microservices, APIs, event-driven systems, and enterprise integration solutions.Support the evolution of capabilities related to risk assessment, monitoring, case management, reporting, and data processing.
• Drive adoption of modern engineering practices and cloud technologies.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Collaborate with business, risk, compliance, operations, and technology leaders.
• Translate business objectives into scalable technical solutions.
• Communicate technical strategy, architecture decisions, and modernization roadmaps to senior leadership.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering, architecture, or technology leadership experience.
• Proven experience designing and delivering large-scale enterprise systems.
• Experience leading architecture discussions and influencing technology strategy.
• Strong background building cloud-based and cloud-native solutions.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to both technical and executive audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience developing or implementing AI, machine learning, intelligent automation, or large language model solutions.
• Background within banking, financial services, risk, fraud, compliance, or related regulated industries.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management abilities.
• Experience leading technical teams and mentoring engineers.