Chief AI Architect

Chief AI Architect

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locations

Malvern, PA

Charlotte, NC

time type

Full time

posted on

Posted Today

job requisition id

178627

Role Overview

The Chief AI Architect for Advice & Wealth Management shapes and evolves the AI architecture underpinning advice delivery, client experiences, operational efficiency, and decision intelligence. This role ensures generative AI capabilities are applied in a practical, business-focused way—balancing innovation with responsible AI practices, scalability, and operational excellence. Partnering closely with business, product, and engineering teams, the Chief AI Architect provides architectural leadership to define how AI is used across the portfolio, establishing patterns, guardrails, and platforms that enable sustainable adoption and measurable outcomes.

Key Accountabilities:

• Define and execute the AI architecture roadmap for Advice & Wealth Management in partnership and collaboration with other organizations.

• Align, lead and collaborate across organizational lines to move AI forward.

• Establish architecture patterns for generative AI powered applications including deployment and monitoring.

• Help business and product leaders understand how they can leverage AI to solve their business problems.

• Influence enterprise guardrails and standards for responsible AI usage (evaluation, observability, model performance, and risk management).

• Establish repeatable patterns for integrating AI into applications, workflows, and platforms.

• Partner with data architecture to ensure AI-ready data foundations (quality, governance, lineage).

• Guide teams on build vs. buy vs. partner decisions for AI capabilities and platforms.

• Research emerging AI technologies and patterns; translate into practical recommendations and investment proposals.

• Influence senior leadership on AI strategy, investment priorities, and sequencing.

• Coach and mentor architects and senior engineers in AI architecture and design practices.

Experience & Capabilities

• Deep expertise inagentic application architectures, model selection, fine tuning, prompt engineering, agentic loop design, context management, memory, MCP and tool calling a must.

• Proven ability toapply AI to real business use cases, moving solutions from concept to production.

• Experience designingAI systems that are secure, observable, and scalable.

• Strong understanding ofmodel lifecycle management(training, deployment, monitoring, retraining).

• Experience establishingresponsible AI governance and controls.

• Knowledge of AI/ML platforms, cloud-native patterns, and integration approaches (e.g. MCP, A2A, etc.).

• Ability to influence senior stakeholders and collaborate across business and technology.

What Success Looks Like

• AI capabilities areconsistently applied to high-value business use casesacross AWM.

• Clear, reusableAI architecture patternsadopted across teams.

• AI systems operate withstrong observability, quality, and governance.

• Business leaders have confidence in AI-driven decision support and automation.

• AWM is positioned toscale both traditional AI and generative AI capabilities responsibly.

Major priorities for the role will include:

• DefiningGenAI and agent-based architecture patterns(e.g., RAG, orchestration layers, evaluation frameworks).

• EstablishingAI observability and monitoring practicesacross all solutions.

• DrivingAI adoption in advice workflows(advisor assist, client engagement, operations automation).

• Creating clear guidance onwhen and how to use AI vs. traditional approaches.

• Partnering with Data Architecture to ensureAI-ready data foundations.

• Integrating AI capabilities acrossmultiple Vanguard systems and third-party platforms.

• Partnering with Enterprise AI & Engineering Platforms organization toshape enterprise AI reference architecture and technologythat supports AWMT AI priorities

Special Factors

Sponsorship

Vanguard is not offering visa sponsorship for this position.

About Vanguard

At Vanguard, we don't just have a mission—we're on a mission.

To work for the long-term financial wellbeing of our clients. To lead through product and services that transform our clients' lives. To learn and develop our skills as individuals and as a team. From Malvern to Melbourne, our mission drives us forward and inspires us to be our best.

How We Work

Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for the majority of our crew members, designed to capture the benefits of enhanced flexibility while enabling in-person learning, collaboration, and connection. We believe our mission-driven and highly collaborative culture is a critical enabler to support long-term client outcomes and enrich the employee experience.

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About Us

Vanguard, one of the world's leading investment management companies, serves individual investors, institutions, employer-sponsored retirement plans, and financial professionals. We have a diverse and talented crew with a culture that promotes teamwork, along with an unwavering focus on serving our clients' best interests.

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