First Citizens Bank · 4 hours ago
AI Platform Director - Data Engineering
Phoenix, AZ
Full-time
Onsite
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
8+ years expFirst Citizens Bank is seeking an experienced Director to lead the AI platform engineering and enablement functions within their Cloud Data and AI Platform organization. The role focuses on building and governing a next-generation AI and machine learning ecosystem, ensuring responsible AI adoption while managing cross-functional engineering teams.
BankingInsuranceLendingPaymentsWealth Management
Responsibilities
Lead the design, implementation, and continuous evolution of the bank’s enterprise AI platform, including infrastructure, model lifecycle management, observability, and integration with Snowflake, AWS, and cloud-native toolchains
Manage and mentor cross-functional engineering teams responsible for AI enablement, automation, and platform services supporting data scientists, engineers, and analysts across the organization
Define and enforce standards, patterns, and guardrails for model deployment, explainability, lineage, and monitoring in alignment with enterprise risk, compliance, and security frameworks
Partner closely with leaders across Responsible AI Governance, AI Portfolio Management, AI Fluency & Engagement, and Applied Data Science & GenAI, in collaboration with enterprise risk partners, to implement a responsible AI framework that embeds audit-ready control evidence and governance mechanisms directly into the platform’s core design to ensure the platform supports scalable, ethical, compliant, and high-impact AI delivery
Build and maintain integrations with enterprise platforms for data ingestion, metadata management, tokenization, and control evidence generation
Continuously enhance the platform’s automation, resilience, and observability, ensuring robust end-to-end telemetry for both model and data pipelines
Drive innovation enablement by establishing secure sandbox environments, reusable components, and APIs that accelerate experimentation while maintaining compliance
Collaborate with Enterprise Risk, Legal, Compliance, and Model Risk partners to embed Responsible AI principles and audit-ready control evidence directly into platform design
Oversee technical due diligence, onboarding, and management of strategic AI and GenAI vendors and tools, ensuring compatibility with enterprise architecture and control frameworks
Develop and mentor engineering talent, championing Agile practices, continuous learning, and adoption of emerging AI and data engineering technologies
Qualification
Required
Bachelor's Degree and 8 years of experience in Information Technology including application development, support roles, and management
OR High School Diploma or GED and 12 years of experience in Information Technology including application development, support roles, and management
Preferred
Experience implementing ML or GenAI systems on major cloud platforms preferably AWS
Knowledge of LLMs, vector databases, and orchestration frameworks
Bachelor's Degree and 8 years of experience in Information Technology, Data Engineering, or AI/ML Platform Engineering including leadership roles
OR High School Diploma or GED and 12 years of experience in Information Technology or AI platform delivery, including management of cross-functional engineering teams
Preferred Area of Experience: Financial services with focus on AI/ML delivery, data platforms, and regulated environments
License or Certification Type: AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Google Professional ML Engineer, Project Management Professional (PMP), or Certified Agile Project Manager (IAPM/PMI-ACP)
Strong understanding of AI/ML pipelines, MLOps frameworks, and Responsible AI controls
Experience integrating third-party AI and data solutions within secure on-prem and cloud ecosystems
Knowledge of information security, data governance, and regulatory compliance frameworks related to AI
Demonstrated ability to develop both strategic and tactical plans, manage vendor partnerships, and build technical teams that deliver enterprise-scale AI capabilities
Company
First Citizens Bank
First Citizens Bank provides banking services, essential business and professional services, wealth management capabilities, and more.
10001+ employees
H1B Sponsorship
First Citizens Bank has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (126)
2024 (115)
2023 (249)
2022 (53)
2021 (12)
2020 (9)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$33M2021-05-07Post Ipo Debt· $10M
2018-08-29Post Ipo Debt· $23M
1986-10-31IPO
Leadership Team
C
Craig Nix
Chief Financial Officer
Greg Smith
Chief Information and Operations Officer
Recent News
2025-12-22
2025-12-21
Company data provided by crunchbase