Director, AI Engineer

seeking a Director, AI Engineer to lead the design, development, and production deployment of AI-driven systems. This role focuses on advanced machine learning, Generative AI, and Agentic AI applications across investment and enterprise functions. You will be responsible for building the engineering foundation that turns experimental models into scalable, secure, and real-time AI products that support investment research, risk assessment, client intelligence, and decision automation.

This role is based in our office in Newark, NJ. Our organization follows a hybrid work structure where employees can work remotely and/ from the office, as needed, based on demands of specific tasks or personal work preferences. This position is hybrid and requires your on-site presence on a reoccurring weekly basis 3 days per week and can change based on future updates to the company's in-office presence policy.

Responsibilities

• Lead the end-to-end engineering (Development, Deployment and Promotion to the production systems) of AI/ML systems, ensuring production performance, scalability, and resilience.

• Develop and maintain AI platforms that support LLMs, transformer-based models, and multi-agent orchestration frameworks.

• Translate business and quantitative ideas into fully integrated AI services, APIs, and microservices.

• Engineer agent-based architectures for tasks such as investment intelligence, contextual parsing across different file types, investment research synthesis, and automated reasoning.

• Optimize AI pipelines for real-time inference, multi-tenant usage, and cost-efficiency using cloud-native infrastructure.

• Collaborate across AI research, quantitative, infrastructure, and compliance teams to align design with firm goals and controls.

• Champion engineering best practices in CI/CD, code testing, observability, and model versioning.

Qualifications

• Minimum Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or comparable quantitative disciplines

• 7+ years of experience in software or AI engineering, including experience leading production-grade AI initiatives

• 5+ years of experience working on enterprise cloud platforms (preferably Azure), developing and maintain full-stack applications

• Strong foundation on fundamental cloud services (SaaS, IaaS, PaaS), including automation of deployment using Terraform and cloud templates

• Proficient in building and scaling applications using Python, Java, or Scala

• Strong command of deployment patterns, including containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), cloud orchestration, and inference optimization

• Hands-on experience with Generative AI systems, including LLM fine-tuning, prompt engineering, embedding retrieval, or retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)

• Working knowledge of Agentic AI, LangChain, CrewAI, or custom agent system design

• Understanding of software and data governance, regulatory expectations (e.g., SR 11-7), and observability in financial contexts is preferred

• Strong drive for excellence with minimum level of guidance and supervision

• Excellent communication and leadership skills; able to align engineering priorities with quantitative, investment, and technology stakeholders; Can convince without authority

• Team-orient mindset and can-do attitude

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in asset management, investment platforms, or financial technology environments

• Familiarity with market data systems, model life-cycle management, and alternative data pipelines

• Exposure to model governance, auditability, and ethical AI standards in regulated sectors

What we offer you:

• Market competitive base salaries, with a yearly bonus potential at every level.

• Medical, dental, vision, life insurance, disability insurance, Paid Time Off (PTO), and leave of absences, such as parental and military leave.

• 401(k) plan with company match (up to 4%).

• Company-funded pension plan.

• Wellness Programsincluding up to $1,600 a year for reimbursement of items purchased to support personal wellbeing needs.

• Work/Life Resources to help support topics such as parenting, housing, senior care, finances, pets, legal matters, education, emotional and mental health, and career development.

• Education Benefit to help finance traditional college enrollment toward obtaining an approved degree and many accredited certificate programs.

• Employee Stock Purchase Plan: Shares can be purchased at 85% of the lower of two prices (Beginning or End of the purchase period), after one year of service.

Eligibility to participate in a discretionary annual incentive program is subject to the rules governing the program, whereby an award, if any, depends on various factors including, without limitation, individual and organizational performance. To find out more about our Total Rewards package, visit Work Life Balance | Prudential Careers. Some of the above benefits may not apply to part-time employees scheduled to work less than 20 hours per week.

Prudential Financial, Inc. of the United States is not affiliated with Prudential plc. which is headquartered in the United Kingdom.

Prudential is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, genetics, disability, marital status, age, veteran status, domestic partner status, medical condition or any other characteristic protected by law.

If you need an accommodation to complete the application process, please email [email protected].

If you are experiencing a technical issue with your application or an assessment, please email [email protected] to request assistance.