Distinguished Engineer - AI Advanced Forward Engineering - Senior Manager

About the role

We are seeking a senior, hands-on Distinguished Engineer to lead the delivery of AI-native systems into highly regulated industries such as tax, finance, and risk.

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.
• Packaging 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.

Requirements

• Deep technical expertise across a broad range of technology domains (AI/ML, Software Engineering, Systems Design, Security, Compute, Data, Networking, DevOps).
• Strong product intuition with the ability to transform field observations into executive-ready recommendations, roadmap inputs, and reusable platform capabilities.
• Ability to balance immediate delivery needs with long-term platform evolution, ensuring short-term solutions contribute to enduring enterprise capabilities.
• High credibility with senior engineers, architects, and client stakeholders.
• Pragmatic mindset: balances ideal design with real constraints (regulatory, organizational, environmental).
• Clear communicator who can explain complex technical tradeoffs with evidence and precision.
• Bias toward repeatability and long-term maintainability over one-off solutions.
• Intellectual curiosity and continuous learning orientation in AI-native development and system design.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience delivering complex AI enterprise systems, ideally in regulated industries.
• 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.
• Experience collaborating closely with architecture, product, and platform teams.
• Strong understanding of software delivery lifecycle, quality gates, and production readiness in enterprise settings.

Skills

• Expertise with AI/ML lifecycle management, observability, and validation approaches.
• Experience working with AI governance, security, and cost controls in production environments.
• Ability to influence client and internal stakeholders, and platform direction through technical credibility and evidence.
• Experience building reference implementations, test harnesses, and validation frameworks.
• Exposure to regulated delivery contexts (e.g., financial services, tax, healthcare, risk platforms).

Benefits

At EY, we’ll develop you with future-focused skills and equip you with world-class experiences. We’ll empower you in a flexible environment, and fuel you and your extraordinary talents in a diverse and inclusive culture of globally connected teams.

Pay

The base salary range for this job in all geographic locations in the US is $144,000 to $329,100. The base salary range for New York City Metro Area, Washington State and California (excluding Sacramento) is $172,800 to $374,000. Individual salaries within those ranges are determined through a wide variety of factors including but not limited to education, experience, knowledge, skills and geography.

Schedule

We offer a flexible vacation policy where you’ll decide how much vacation time you need based on your own personal circumstances. You’ll also be granted time off for designated EY Paid Holidays, Winter/Summer breaks, Personal/Family Care, and other leaves of absence when needed to support your physical, financial, and emotional well-being.