AI/ML Engineering Lead

Birmingham, AL / Nebraska - Virtual / Work From HomeData Science – Data and AI /Full Time /HybridThe work we do has an impact on millions of lives, and you can be a part of it.We help protect our customers against life’s uncertainties. Regardless of where you work within the company, you’ll be helping provide protection and peace of mind when our customers need it most. Protective Life is transforming how it builds and operates software — moving to a product operating model organized around empowered, outcome-oriented teams — and is investing in machine learning and generative AI to serve customers and run the business better. Voyager is one of these product pods, spanning our Life, Annuities, and Employee Benefits lines.The AI/ML Engineering Lead is a hands-on technical leader who owns the path from experiment to governed production for machine learning and GenAI on our Databricks Lakehouse on Microsoft Azure. You will set the engineering standards for the ML lifecycle, mentor ML and data engineers, and personally deliver critical components — while working closely with product managers, data engineers, and Model Risk partners. As a regulated life insurer, we hold models to disciplined standards: this role is accountable not only for shipping models but for their reliability, monitoring, documentation, fairness, and explainability.KEY RESPONSIBILITIESLead the design and delivery of production ML and GenAI systems on Azure Databricks — from problem framing and data sourcing through deployment, monitoring, and retraining.Set technical direction and standards for the ML lifecycle — experimentation, feature engineering, training, evaluation, deployment, drift detection, and retraining — and hold the team to them.Provide hands-on technical leadership and mentoring to ML and data engineers through design and code reviews, pairing, and raising the bar on engineering craft.Build and operate MLOps foundations using MLflow (experiment tracking, model registry), Databricks Model Serving, and Unity Catalog for governed feature and model management.Architect GenAI capabilities — retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), embeddings and vector search, prompt/system design, evaluation harnesses, guardrails, and human-in-the-loop review.Depend on the pod's data stack — dlt (dltHub) ingestion, dbt models, and Dagster orchestration — to ensure training data and features are reliable, versioned, and reproducible.Establish CI/CD for ML in Azure DevOps (ADO) — automated testing, model packaging, and repeatable, auditable deployments across environments.Own model performance and cost — monitoring accuracy and output quality, latency, and drift, and managing training/serving compute with a FinOps mindset.Partner with Model Risk, Data Governance, Legal, and Security so models meet documentation, validation, explainability, bias/fairness, and privacy expectations.Translate product outcomes into ML solutions with product managers — balancing discovery experimentation against production reliability and time-to-value.Contribute to AI governance — model inventory, documentation, approval workflows, and responsible-AI practices aligned to company and regulatory expectations.Guide pragmatic adoption of the applied-AI landscape appropriate to a mid-sized carrier, avoiding hype and over-engineering. QUALIFICATIONSREQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS8+ years in software, data, or ML engineering, including several years building and operating production ML systems.Demonstrated technical leadership — mentoring engineers, setting standards, and leading the design of non-trivial systems (formal people management not required, but valued).Strong Python and SQL, with deep experience across the end-to-end ML lifecycle and common ML frameworks (e.g., scikit-learn, PyTorch, or TensorFlow).Hands-on MLOps experience — experiment tracking, model registry, deployment/serving, monitoring, and retraining — with MLflow and Azure Databricks strongly preferred.Experience delivering GenAI/LLM applications: RAG, embeddings and vector databases, prompt/system design, and structured evaluation.Experience with the modern data stack the pod uses — dlt (dltHub) ingestion, dbt modeling, and Dagster orchestration — on a Databricks lakehouse (Delta Lake).CI/CD experience with Azure DevOps (ADO) and Git-based, test-supported development practices.Working knowledge of Microsoft Azure — compute, storage, identity, and Azure AI/OpenAI services.Demonstrated rigor in documentation, model evaluation, and secure, compliant handling of sensitive data.Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Engineering, or a related field — or equivalent practical experience.PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONSExperience in financial services or insurance ML — underwriting, actuarial, fraud, claims, or customer models — and familiarity with model risk management practices (e.g., SR 11-7-aligned validation).Familiarity with Databricks Mosaic AI, Feature Store / Unity Catalog features, or Vector Search, and with Azure Machine Learning.Experience applying responsible-AI and model-governance techniques — bias/fairness testing and explainability (e.g., SHAP, LIME).Experience with streaming or real-time inference and low-latency serving.Experience coaching or formally managing engineers.Advanced degree in a quantitative field.Relevant certification such as Databricks Certified Machine Learning Engineer or Microsoft Azure AI Engineer Associate.$124,500 - $180,000 a yearProtective’s targeted salary range for this position is $124,500 to $180,000. Actual salaries may vary depending on factors, including but not limited to job location, skills, and experience. The range listed is just one component of Protective’s total compensation package for employees.This position also offers additional incentive opportunities through an annual incentive based on individual and Company performance.Employee Benefits:We aim to protect the wellbeing of our employees and their families with a broad benefits offering. In addition to offering comprehensive health, dental and vision insurance, we support emotional wellbeing through mental health benefits and an employee assistance program. Work/life balance is important and Protective offers a variety of paid time away benefits (e.g., paid time off, paid parental leave, short-term disability, and a cultural observance day). The financial health of our employees is just as important as physical and emotional health. Some of the financial wellbeing benefits include contributions to healthcare accounts, a pension plan, and a 401(k) plan with Company matching. All employees are encouraged to protect their overall wellbeing by engaging in ProHealth Rewards, Protective’s platform to improve wellbeing while earning cash rewards. Eligibility for certain benefits may vary by position in accordance with the terms of the Company’s benefit plans.Accommodations for Applicants with a Disability:If you require an accommodation to complete the application and recruitment process due to a disability, please email [email protected]. This information will be held in confidence and used only to determine an appropriate accommodation for the application and recruitment process.Please note that the above email is solely for individuals with disabilities requesting an accommodation. General employment questions should not be sent through this process.We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer committed to being inclusive and attracting, retaining, and growing an inclusive workforce.