Associate Director / Lead Engineer, GenAI

The Associate Director / Lead Engineer leads a small team of software engineers responsible for designing and delivering the data pipelines, retrieval systems, and knowledge integrations that power a generative AI platform. This role combines technical leadership with people management — setting architectural direction, removing blockers, and ensuring the team delivers high-quality, scalable solutions. The Associate Director /Lead Engineer balances hands-on technical involvement with strategic planning, stakeholder communication, and team development.

Essential Job Functions

• Directly manage team(s) focused on delivering high quality project results within one or more major technology disciplines: strategy, software development, operations, engineering, development services, information security, and compliance.

• Focus on team leadership, delivery of business value, risk mitigation, cost optimization and return on investment.

• Deliver results based upon FINRA annual goals, department goals and management requests.

• Direct and coordinate organization's financial and budget activities to fund operations, maximize investments, and increase efficiency for a project(s).

• Ensure technology best practices are being implemented and improved within team(s).

• Analyze information and evaluate results to choose the best solutions and solve problems.

• Support the evaluation of new technologies, techniques, and tools.

• Report status and issues to senior Technology management team.

• Work directly with outside vendors to negotiate services and product agreements

• Willingness to lead, take responsibility and offer options.

• Serve as a backup to more senior level management as needed.

• Develop constructive and cooperative working relationships with peers both within and outside of Technology, and maintain them over time.

• Establish and maintain external relationships with strategic product/service vendors and industry forums (government & private councils, standards bodies, product forums, etc.), as appropriate.

• Contribute to the establishment, evolution and continued compliance with standard practices and processes within the disciplines.

• Assist with adherence to technology policies and comply with all security controls.

• Ensure all work products meets/exceeds FINRA standards and risks are effectively managed.

• Participate in periodic Disaster Recovery (DR), Business Continuity Planning (BCP) and Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) testing and reporting.

Resource Management:

• Identify and hire resource/skills needed within their organization.

• Responsible for staff performance management and training.

• Coordinate assignment of subordinate staff.

• Demonstration of FINRA’s values.

• Collaboration, both in-person and virtually, in furtherance of FINRA’s mission of investor protection and market integrity.

Key Responsibilities:

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Set the technical vision and architectural direction for knowledge framework integrations, including data ingestion, embedding pipelines, and retrieval systems

• Make key design decisions on pipeline architecture, data modeling, and search strategies, balancing quality, performance, and delivery timelines

• Evaluate and recommend technologies, frameworks, and approaches for knowledge integration challenges

• Maintain sufficient hands-on involvement to provide credible technical guidance and unblock the team on complex problems

• Demonstrate solid understanding of systems and processes within the domain and recommend improvements

Team Leadership & People Management

• Manage, mentor, and develop a small team of software engineers, fostering a culture of ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement

• Conduct regular one-on-ones, provide constructive feedback, and support career growth for direct reports

• Plan and prioritize team workload, balancing feature delivery, technical debt, and operational responsibilities

• Recruit, onboard, and ramp new team members as the team scales

• Champion collaborative resolution of defects and lead internal process improvement initiatives

Engineering Excellence & Quality

• Establish and enforce engineering standards for code quality, testing, documentation, and peer review across the team

• Guide the team in best practices for data pipeline development, retrieval system design, and test automation

• Ensure comprehensive test coverage including unit testing, integration testing, and retrieval quality evaluation

• Drive adoption of test-driven development (TDD) practices and automated quality gates

Planning & Delivery

• Own the team's roadmap and delivery commitments, translating business requirements into actionable technical plans

• Break down complex integration initiatives into well-scoped work items with clear acceptance criteria

• Track progress, identify risks early, and adjust plans to meet deadlines without sacrificing quality

• Provide regular status updates and delivery forecasts to leadership

Stakeholder Collaboration

• Partner with product, platform engineering, and agent development teams to align knowledge integration priorities with broader platform goals

• Communicate complex or technical information at the appropriate level for diverse audiences including leadership, peers, and external partners

• Represent the team in cross-functional planning sessions, architecture reviews, and prioritization discussions

• Build strong working relationships across the organization to facilitate collaboration and shared accountability

Generative AI & Emerging Technologies

• Stay informed of advances in RAG architectures, embedding models, retrieval optimization, and knowledge management approaches

• Evaluate emerging technologies and techniques for applicability to the team's work, making build-vs-buy recommendations

• Drive innovation within the team by creating space for experimentation and proof-of-concept work

Security & Compliance

• Ensure all team deliverables meet or exceed organizational standards for secure development practices

• Oversee secure handling of sensitive domain data throughout the ingestion and retrieval lifecycle

• Assist with adherence to technology policies and ensure the team complies with all security controls

• Participate in threat modeling and security discussions for data pipeline and infrastructure components

Education/Experience Requirements

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Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems or related discipline with at least five (5) years of related experience, or equivalent training and/or work experience; Master’s degree and past Financial Services industry experience preferred.

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Minimum of 3 years of managing technical programs and/or processes including staff management of at least four (4) resources and budget of at least $1 million annually.

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Knowledge of business, technology and management principles involved in strategic planning, organizational change management, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership technique, and coordination of people and resources.

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Experience must include direct project experience in one of the following areas: strategy, software development, operations, engineering, development services, information security, and/or compliance.

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Extensive knowledge of industry leading technology best practices including familiarity with technology methodologies including at least one of ISO-9000, ITIL, Agile and iterative.

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Excellent written and verbal technical communication skills.

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Demonstrated ability to develop effective working relationships and leverage those relationships to improve the quality of work products.

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Must be able to identify, evaluate and recommend processes, tools, technologies and/or products to meet business and budgetary requirements.

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Should be well organized, thorough, and able to handle competing priorities.

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Ability to maintain focus and develop proficiency in new