Principal AI Engineer

** JOB PURPOSE: **
To lead the technical design, development, testing, and deployment of complex Generative AI solutions as part of the AI Engineering team, strengthening the bank’s AI engineering capability through deep technical expertise, engineering excellence, and reusable solution patterns. The role is responsible for hands- on technical leadership across the AI development lifecycle, including model integration, pipeline and service design, production deployment, performance optimization, and operational readiness, ensuring that AI solutions are robust, scalable, secure, and compliant with established engineering and governance standards.

Works closely with Data teams, the AI Solution Architect, and the AI Engineering Manager to translate approved solution designs and model outputs into production-grade AI systems embedded within the bank’s technology ecosystem. The role also provides technical guidance on complex implementations and supports resolution of critical engineering challenges.

** KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES:**
Description
Roles and Responsibilities
1. Design and implement complex, enterprise-scale AI engineering solutions, including model integration pipelines, inference services, APIs, agentic and generative AI components, and data processing workflows, in accordance with solution architecture and technical direction established with the AI Engineering Manager.
2. Lead the implementation and continuous improvement of MLOps and LLMOps practices across assigned AI solutions, including model and prompt versioning, CI/CD and CI/CT pipelines, automated testing and evaluation, observability, performance monitoring, and model and data drift detection.
3. Design scalable, resilient, secure, and reusable AI integration patterns and service components that enable AI capabilities to be consistently consumed across business applications, digital channels, and enterprise platforms.
4. Provide technical oversight and assurance for AI engineering deliverables through solution design reviews, code reviews, testing strategies, performance benchmarking, and production-readiness assessments, escalating material technical risks and decisions to the AI Engineering Manager.
5. Act as a senior technical escalation point for production AI solutions, leading the diagnosis and resolution of complex engineering issues and recommending improvements to reliability, scalability, performance, security, and cost efficiency.
6. Develop and drive the adoption of reusable AI engineering frameworks, libraries, reference implementations, accelerators, and shared tooling that improve engineering productivity, standardization, and delivery consistency across AI initiatives.
7. Collaborate with Data Science, Data Engineering, Enterprise Architecture, Cloud, Cybersecurity, and application engineering teams to translate AI requirements into robust production implementations, providing expert guidance on deployment, integration, infrastructure, scalability, and non-functional requirements.
8. Apply and promote secure, responsible, and governed AI engineering practices, ensuring solutions comply with enterprise security, data protection, responsible AI, regulatory, and technology governance requirements.
9. Evaluate emerging AI technologies, foundation models, frameworks, and engineering approaches through technical assessments and proofs of concept, providing recommendations to the AI Engineering Manager on their applicability and potential adoption.
10. Support the AI Engineering Manager in technical planning and delivery of AI initiatives by providing expert input on architecture, engineering complexity, dependencies, technical risks, and effort estimates, while mentoring AI Engineers and Senior AI Engineers and helping raise engineering standards across the team
Compliance
11. Comply with all relevant CBE regulations, banking laws, AML regulations and internal CIB policies and code of conduct in order to maintain CIB’s sound legal position and mitigate any potential risks.
Policies, Processes and Procedures
12. Follow all relevant department policies, processes, standard operating procedures and instructions so that work is carried out in a controlled and consistent manner
Day-to-day Operations
13. Follow the day-to-day operations related to own jobs in the department to ensure continuity of work