[Hiring] Lead AI Engineer @SavvyMoney

Role Description

Reporting to the VP, Information Security & DevOps, the Lead, AI Engineer owns both halves of AI at SavvyMoney: the systems and the adoption. You architect and personally write the internal AI tooling the company runs on, and you own getting it used. This is a high-visibility role inside our newly chartered AI Engineering Team.

• Hands-On Build and Technical Direction
  • Own the technical direction of every internal AI system we run, and write a large share of it yourself.
  • Define the reference architectures the whole company builds on — RAG pipelines, agent loops, evals, the LLM gateway, observability, and cost control — and prototype the first working version of each.
  • Ship production systems end-to-end with the AI Engineer: requirements, prototype, deploy, instrument, iterate.
  • Set the technical bar by example — code review, eval coverage, prompt-injection defense, and cost-per-outcome discipline.
• Stakeholder Partnership and Delivery
  • Run intake with business and executive stakeholders — elicit requirements, pressure-test the use case, and decide what the team builds, buys, or declines.
  • Own the acceptance gate: the stakeholder who requested the work confirms it in UAT before it ships.
  • Present outcomes to the people who fund and use them — monthly executive review, quarterly business reviews, and demos to the teams whose work changes.
• Champions Program and Community
  • Recruit, train, and run a network of named "AI champions" — at least one per business unit — who serve as distributed sensors and accelerators for adoption.
  • Run the champions cadence — monthly sync, quarterly offsite, recognition tied to measured impact — and the internal community of practice that shares wins, patterns, and friction across teams.
• Training and Literacy
  • Design and deploy a scalable AI literacy curriculum with role-specific tracks for engineering, customer success, finance, legal, sales, recruiting, and partner ops.
  • Own build-vs-buy on training vendors and certification pathways, and grow a measurable AI-fluency baseline quarter over quarter.
• Communications and Storytelling
  • Own the internal AI Slack channel, monthly newsletter, quarterly town halls, and a success-story library tied to dollarized outcomes — translating complex AI concepts into narratives that land with technical and executive audiences alike.
• Office Hours and Friction Removal
  • Run weekly drop-in office hours that make the AI Engineering Team's tools and support accessible to every team.
  • Identify recurring friction (policy ambiguity, tool gaps, integration blockers) and partner with your AI Engineer and the VP, Information Security & DevOps to remove it.
• Adoption Telemetry
  • Own the data: % active users by team, by tool, by role.
  • Identify dark spots and design targeted interventions— such as training, champion deployment, leadership nudges, or licensing changes.
  • Report adoption metrics into the monthly executive review and quarterly PSG scorecard.
• Policy Rollout and Tool Licensing
  • When the AI Engineering Team ships an acceptable-use policy or adopts a new tool, you own getting it adopted in practice — not just published.
  • Advise on which seats go where, based on adoption data and ROI signals rather than headcount.
• Partner Ops Enablement
  • Extend the champions and training model to partner ops teams where ROI clearly exceeds the cost of a custom build.
  • Coordinate with our partner-facing teams to surface AI use cases that scale across our 1,600+ FI relationships.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, including production LLM systems you personally architected and shipped.
• Deep hands-on proficiency in Python and cloud-native AWS development, with strong opinions on evals, cost-per-outcome, latency, and prompt-injection defense.
• Deep technical literacy with modern AI tools (Copilot, Cursor, Claude, Glean, ChatGPT) — you use them daily, not just demo them.
• Strong analytical mindset with experience defining adoption metrics, instrumenting telemetry, and reporting to executive audiences.
• Excellent written and verbal communication — you can run a requirements session with a business team and present the outcome to the executive team in the same week.
• Demonstrated success driving organization-wide behavior change and running a champions network or community of practice at scale (500+ employees).
• Comfort working cross-functionally with engineering, legal, security, HR, and business leadership.

Preferred Experience

• Fintech, lending, or financial services background.
• Prior experience in InfoSec, DevOps, or a regulated-industry technical function — the policy-and-telemetry muscle translates directly.
• PE-portfolio company experience.
• Experience with AI governance frameworks (NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, or equivalent).
• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field, or compelling self-taught equivalent.

What You'll Be Measured On

• Internal AI systems shipped to production, and the business outcome each one moved.
• Eval coverage and cost-per-outcome across production AI workflows.
• Reference architectures adopted as the default path by engineering teams across SavvyMoney.
• Active adoption percentage.
• Champion engagement (% of named champions actively contributing each month).
• Training completion rate by role.
• Internal NPS on AI tools and on the team's delivery.
• Communications engagement (Slack, newsletter, office hours).

Benefits

• The annual base salary for this position is between $150,000.00 and $175,000.00, depending upon geography and experience.
• Equity Compensation Package
• Flexible Time Off (FTO) - take time off as needed to rest and recharge.
• Medical, Dental, Vision – 100% premium paid for employee
• Disability/Life Insurance
• Opportunity for learning and career growth with a top Bay Area technology company
• Reimbursement for remote work setup
• Monthly stipend for phone and internet
• Team building events, culture activities, all hands events
• Paid time off to volunteer and serve the community
• Half day Fridays
• 401k matching contribution
• Beautiful California East Bay offices in Dublin, CA