Forward Deployed Engineer - Applied AI - Senior Manager - Financial Services - Consulting

Location: Charlotte, Dallas, New York, Tampa

About the role

Forward Deployed Engineer – Applied AI - Senior Manager - Financial Services at EY. EY’s Financial Services Organization (FSO) focuses on AI/ML initiatives, helping financial institutions innovate, build smarter operations, create revenue streams, and manage risk through data‑driven AI solutions. The role leads AI system design, architecture, and delivery, providing technical authority and shaping enterprise AI strategy.

Responsibilities

• Define and govern system design principles, reference architectures, and engineering patterns for AI/ML, generative AI, RAG, and agentic systems.
• Lead the most complex and escalated technical challenges across multiple teams, providing hands‑on guidance in architecture, coding, troubleshooting, and design remediation.
• Own end‑to‑end architecture for strategic AI initiatives, including service boundaries, orchestration models, data contracts, evaluation frameworks, and operational guardrails.
• Drive consistency in engineering standards, design reviews, architecture governance, observability, resilience, security, and responsible AI practices.
• Shape the enterprise integration model for AI/ML components within broader product, platform, infrastructure, and client delivery ecosystems.
• Define and evolve API and integration strategies for AI platforms and applications, including contract design, versioning, security, idempotency, and reliability patterns at enterprise scale.
• Ensure API layers and application integration patterns decouple clients from internal AI service topology, enabling safe evolution of models, workflows, and data stores without breaking consumers.
• Lead large, complex project or program delivery outcomes by aligning architecture decisions, engineering execution, stakeholder governance, risks, dependencies, and delivery quality.
• Influence platform strategy, technical roadmaps, and investment decisions through deep engineering judgment and practical delivery insight.
• Partner with senior leaders across Engineering, Architecture, Product, Data, Security, Operations, and engagement leadership to align strategy with execution.
• Establish scalable approaches for model evaluation, benchmarking, experimentation, rollout controls, and production quality measurement.
• Mentor senior engineers and technical leads, raising the organization’s bar for system design, technical depth, delivery rigor, and architectural decision‑making.
• Use modern AI‑assisted software engineering tools such as Claude Code, Codex, or equivalent agentic coding platforms to accelerate engineering design, implementation, and review practices.
• Identify opportunities to reduce duplication, accelerate delivery, and create reusable AI platform capabilities across the enterprise.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree preferred.
• 10+ years of applied engineering experience, including extensive experience in senior AI/ML engineering, architecture, or complex technology delivery roles.

Qualifications

• Ideally, you’ll also have a Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) or Science (MS).
• Prior consulting experience.

Skills

• AI and Engineering Skills:
  • Gen AI Foundational: translate complex enterprise business challenges into strategic AI architecture decisions; deep knowledge of foundation model landscape; experience architecting enterprise‑scale knowledge AI systems; advanced hands‑on engineering credibility in Python; subject‑matter authority on knowledge AI systems.
  • Agentic and LLM Ops: expertise in designing and governing enterprise agentic AI frameworks; define and enforce LLM Ops standards; integrate external vendor tooling for model monitoring, observability, safety, compliance; advise on multi‑year AI architecture strategy; identify opportunities to reduce duplication and create reusable AI platform capabilities; define enterprise‑wide evaluation and observability standards.
  • Software Engineering: define and govern API strategy, containerization, and integration standards for enterprise AI platforms; proven track record building large‑scale enterprise AI platforms; govern data security, privacy, and compliance practices; strong ability to communicate complex AI architecture concepts to diverse audiences.
• Soft Skills and additional attributes:
  • Clear communicator able to explain complex AI system behavior and trade‑offs to technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
  • Strong ownership and accountability.
  • Comfort with ambiguity.
  • Collaborative and cross‑functional.
  • Sound judgment in regulated environments, with awareness of risk, controls, and when human oversight is required.

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 extra