Sr Director AI Enterprise Engineering

Pacific Life; Newport Beach (CA); On-site; USD 204,000 - 249,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, vision benefits

Paid time off

Parental leave

401k with company match

Job summary

Pacific Life is seeking a Sr Director of AI Engineering to lead the Enterprise AI Engineering team in Newport Beach, CA. The role drives production AI platforms, governance, and secure-by-default practices across engineering and security functions.

You will build and scale an AI-focused engineering organization, partner with CISO and risk teams, and ensure platform adoption across the enterprise while delivering measurable improvements in productivity and reliability.

Qualifications

• Engineering leadership at Director+ scope with multi-team responsibility.
• Deep domain expertise across developer experience, testing, SRE/observability, or security.
• Hands-on production AI delivery with LLMs, ML pipelines, or AI platforms.
• Cloud-native architecture across one or more providers.
• Experience implementing MLOps, LLMOps, and AI lifecycle governance.
• Strong security, privacy and compliance knowledge; AI risk awareness.
• Ability to lead technical risk discussions with security leadership.
• 20+ years engineering experience; 8+ years in leadership at Director+ level.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute enterprise AI Engineering Build roadmap aligned to business goals.
• Own the Build Register as system of record for AI platforms and delivery commitments.
• Plan and prioritize via Spec Build planning loops using adoption signals.
• Lead production-ready AI platform capabilities, including LLM integration and agentic workflows.
• Establish MLOps and LLMOps capabilities with CI/CD and lifecycle governance.
• Ensure enterprise standards for security, privacy, compliance, and Responsible AI.
• Embed secure-by-default practices across AI and engineering workflows.
• Partner with CISO and risk leadership to define governance expectations.
• Drive cross-functional alignment across engineering, product, platform, and security.
• Build and scale a high-performing engineering org through hiring and development.
• Resolve cross-team dependencies through alignment and escalation management.

Skills

Executive leadership

AI engineering

MLOps

Cloud-native

Security & compliance

Technical risk

Cross-team collaboration

Tools

Azure

AWS

GCP

Job description

Job Description

Providing for loved ones, planning rewarding retirements, saving enough for whatever lies ahead – our policyholders count on us to be there when it matters most. It’s a big ask, but it’s one that we have the power to deliver when we work together. We collaborate and innovate – pushing one another to transform not just Pacific Life, but the entire industry for the better. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do. Pacific Life is more than a job, it’s a career with purpose. It’s a career where you have the support, balance, and resources to make a positive impact on the future – including your own.

Job Description

Providing for loved ones, planning rewarding retirements, saving enough for whatever lies ahead – our policyholders count on us to be there when it matters most. It’s a big ask, but it’s one that we have the power to deliver when we work together. We collaborate and innovate – pushing one another to transform not just Pacific Life, but the entire industry for the better. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do. Pacific Life is more than a job, it’s a career with purpose. It’s a career where you have the support, balance, and resources to make a positive impact on the future – including your own.

We’re actively seeking a talented Sr Director of AI Engineering to join our Engineering Excellence team in Newport Beach, CA.

As a Sr Director of AI Engineering, you’ll move Pacific Life, and your career, forward by advancing PL engineering through leveraging AI toward agentic adoption where the work supports it or is required.

This role owns delivery across four capability areas for Engineering Excellence (Code & Delivery, Engineering in Test, Reliability & Telemetry, Security & Compliance), ensuring that AI capabilities are operationalized from experimentation into secure, production-grade systems.

This role operates and drives enterprise adoption of AI-enabled engineering practices, platform standardization, and governance.

Scope

Portfolio: Enterprise AI engineering platforms including CI/CD, AI-assisted development, test generation and quality intelligence, observability/AIOps, and continuous security and compliance

Operating Model: Product based delivery with shared artifacts (Build Register) and continuous feedback loops (Spec Build Apply)

Enterprise Impact: Platforms consumed broadly across engineering to drive productivity, quality, and reliability

Responsibilities

• Define and execute the enterprise AI Engineering Build roadmap, ensuring priorities are clearly aligned to business outcomes, platform adoption goals, and enterprise engineering needs.
• Build portfolio management: Own the Build Register as the system of record for AI engineering platforms, tools, components, and delivery commitments.
• Planning and prioritization: Operate Spec Build planning loops, using adoption signals and enterprise feedback to shape roadmap priorities.
• AI platform delivery: Lead delivery of production-ready AI platform capabilities, including LLM integration, RAG systems, and agentic workflows.
• MLOps and LLMOps practices: Establish production-grade MLOps and LLMOps capabilities, including CI/CD, model lifecycle governance, monitoring, and evaluation.
• Enterprise standards and Responsible AI: Ensure AI engineering platforms meet enterprise expectations for security, privacy, compliance, and Responsible AI.
• Secure-by-default engineering: Embed secure-by-default practices across AI and engineering workflows, including application security, threat modeling, and policy enforcement.
• Governance and risk partnership: Partner with CISO and risk leadership to define governance expectations, strengthen control alignment, and manage high-risk releases.
• Cross-functional alignment: Drive alignment across engineering, product, platform, and security teams to ensure shared priorities, clear decision-making, and coordinated execution.
• Organization building: Build and scale a high-performing engineering organization through hiring, rotation planning, leadership development, and capability growth.
• Dependency management: Resolve cross-team dependencies through lateral alignment, shared accountability, and proactive escalation management.

Required Qualifications

• Engineering leadership: Proven track record leading multi-team platform or AI engineering organizations at Director+ scope.
• Domain depth and breadth: Deep expertise in at least two domains, such as Developer Experience Engineering, Software Engineering in Test, SRE/Observability, or Application Security, with working fluency across the others.
• Production AI delivery: Hands-on experience building and scaling production AI/ML systems, including LLMs, ML pipelines, or AI platforms.
• Cloud-native architecture: Strong understanding of cloud-native architecture such as Azure, AWS, or GCP and single or multi cloud design and deployment
• AI lifecycle governance: Experience implementing MLOps, LLMOps, and AI lifecycle governance practices.
• Security, privacy, and compliance: Strong understanding of secure SDLC, data privacy, and compliance requirements as well as fluency in AI and LLM emerging security challenges.
• Technical risk leadership: Ability to operate as a peer to security leadership and own technical risk conversations.
• Experience level: Minimum 20+ years of engineering experience, including at least 8 years leading teams at Director+ scope.

Preferred Qualifications

• Enterprise AI platform experience: Experience building enterprise AI platforms or scaling enterprise engineering organizations.
• Responsible AI and regulatory fluency: Familiarity with Responsible AI frameworks, such as NIST AI RMF, and related regulatory expectations.
• Agentic architecture exposure: Experience with multi-agent architectures, orchestration layers, or model routing.
• Regulated industry experience: Experience operating in regulated industries, such as financial services, insurance, or healthcare.
• Platform adoption leadership: Experience managing platform adoption and internal developer experience programs.

Leadership Expectations

• Strategic systems thinking: Translate AI opportunities into enterprise-scale platforms that advance engineering productivity, quality, and reliability.
• Innovation with discipline: Balance speed of innovation with governance, security, and operational rigor.
• Team leadership and culture: Build high-performing teams with strong accountability, engineering excellence, and continuous improvement practices.
• Executive communication and alignment: Communicate effectively with executive stakeholders and drive alignment across enterprise priorities.
• Operational execution: Maintain rigor across delivery planning, prioritization, execution tracking, and outcomes management.

Base Pay Range

The base pay range noted represents the company’s good faith minimum and maximum range for this role at the time of posting. The actual compensation offered to a candidate will be dependent upon several factors, including but not limited to experience, qualifications and geographic location. Also, most employees are eligible for additional incentive pay.

$203,760.00 - $249,040.00

Your Benefits Start Day 1

Your wellbeing is important to Pacific Life, and we’re committed to providing you with flexible benefits that you can tailor to meet your needs. Whether you are focusing on your physical, financial, emotional, or social wellbeing, we’ve got you covered.

• Prioritization of your health and well-being including Medical, Dental, Vision, and Wellbeing Reimbursement Account that can be used on yourself or your eligible dependents
• Generous paid time off options including: Paid Time Off, Holiday Schedules, and Financial Planning Time Off
• Paid Parental Leave as well as an Adoption Assistance Program
• Competitive 401k savings plan with company match and an additional contribution regardless of participation

You Can Be Who You Are

We are committed to a culture of diversity and inclusion that embraces the authenticity of all employees, partners and communities. We support all employees to thrive and achieve their fullest potential.

What’s life like at Pacific Life? Visit Instagram.com/lifeatpacificlife

EEO Statement

Pacific Life Insurance Company is an Equal Opportunity /Affirmative Action Employer, M/F/D/V. If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran, you have the right to request an accommodation if you are unable or limited in your ability to use or access our career center as a result of your disability. To request an accommodation, contact a Human Resources Representative at Pacific Life Insurance Company.