Senior Distinguished AI Engineer Forward Engineering Lead

EY; Portland (OR); Hybrid; USD 144,000 - 329,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Total Rewards package

Flexible vacation policy

Competitive compensation

Job summary

EY seeks a senior Distinguished Engineer to lead delivery of AI-native systems into regulated industries, balancing real-world constraints with architecture intent and safety. You will guide Forward Deployed Engineers and partner with product teams to translate field realities into durable, enterprise-grade patterns.

The role emphasizes hands-on design, client presence, and scalable platform evolution, with a hybrid external-client delivery model and strong emphasis on governance and audit-grade

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience delivering complex AI enterprise systems.
• Deep experience with distributed systems, cloud platforms, and integration-heavy architectures.
• Hands-on experience with modern AI-enabled application stacks (e.g., agentic systems, orchestration frameworks, LLM-backed services).
• Proven ability to operate in forward-deployed or customer-facing engineering roles, owning outcomes under real-world constraints.
• Track record of creating reusable technical patterns or platforms that scale beyond a single engagement.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a cross-engagement technical authority, ensuring delivery implementations adhere to architecture intent, safety, and economic constraints in regulated environments.
• Synthesize learnings from multiple delivery cells into durable reference integrations, validated implementations, and reusable patterns that reduce repeated failure modes.
• Work with AI agents to support regulated safe-to-ship decisions by contributing technical evidence and validation inputs.
• Operate as a player‑coach, contributing directly to complex system design and implementation while guiding delivery teams toward consistent, repeatable approaches.
• Own the consolidation, prioritization, and communication of cross‑cell product signals, converting field observations and client‑specific adaptations into evidence-based recommendations, distinguishing them from isolated customer requests.
• Partner with Product Engineering and Product Architecture to package consolidated client patterns into technical business cases, backlog candidates, and platform investment recommendations.
• Participate in shaping sessions, architecture reviews, and prioritization discussions, advocating changes that improve portability, operability, and customer outcomes.

Skills

AI/ML

Distributed systems

Cloud platforms

Systems design

Security

DevOps

Client engagement

Education

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree

Tools

Orchestration frameworks

LLM governance tools

Observability platforms

Security tooling

Job description

EY seeks a senior Distinguished Engineer to lead delivery of AI-native systems into regulated industries, balancing real-world constraints with architecture intent and safety. You will guide Forward Deployed Engineers and partner with product teams to translate field realities into durable, enterprise-grade patterns.

The role emphasizes hands-on design, client presence, and scalable platform evolution, with a hybrid external-client delivery model and strong emphasis on governance and audit-grade