AI Lead

AI Strategy & Leadership

The purpose of this role is to lead the design, delivery, and enhancement of technical solutions for complex business requirements, ensuring high-quality application support and reporting that meets user specifications. The role involves managing application strategies, roadmaps, and delivery capabilities, as well as providing subject matter expertise and leadership in technical design and issues related to existing applications. Additionally, the role includes mentoring junior developers, driving user acceptance testing, and actively engaging with business stakeholders to influence the adoption of solutions.

Location: Chicago

Work Arrangement: Hybrid

The salary range for this role is: $116,000 - $191,500

Your New Role

Lead the design, architecture, and deployment of enterprise AI and Generative AI solutions aligned with business and technology priorities. Partner with Product, Technology, Data, Security, Architecture, and Business leaders to identify and deliver high-value AI opportunities. Provide technical leadership, coaching, and mentorship across AI delivery teams. Establish scalable AI patterns, standards, and best practices across the organization. Drive AI innovation while balancing business value, risk, security, and operational considerations.

Architect and deliver AI solutions built on the Microsoft Azure AI platform, including:

• Azure AI Foundry
• Azure OpenAI Service
• Azure AI Search
• AI Agents and Agentic Workflows
• Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)
• Prompt Engineering
• Model Evaluation & Observability

Build scalable solutions that integrate enterprise data sources, APIs, and business systems.

Lead solution design reviews and transform architectural feedback into pragmatic, production-ready designs.

Establish reusable AI frameworks and accelerators that can be leveraged across multiple business domains.

Evaluate, select, and operationalize leading foundation models based on business use cases. Implement solutions using models hosted within Azure AI Foundry and Azure AI services. Work with multiple LLM providers including:

• OpenAI GPT
• Anthropic Claude
• Google Gemini
• Microsoft Copilot ecosystem
• Emerging enterprise AI platforms

Understand trade-offs between performance, cost, latency, governance, and business outcomes.

Partner closely with Cyber Security, Enterprise Architecture, Infrastructure, Networking, and Risk teams. Design AI solutions that meet enterprise security, privacy, compliance, and governance standards. Navigate architecture review boards and security approval processes. Develop and advocate for approved AI patterns, reference architectures, and governance frameworks. Ensure Responsible AI principles are embedded across solution design and delivery.

Rapidly prototype new concepts and proof-of-concepts to validate emerging opportunities. Drive successful transition from experimentation to enterprise-scale implementation. Act as a change agent, helping teams adopt modern AI capabilities and ways of working. Influence and align stakeholders across multiple teams, business units, and technology functions.

Technical Expertise

Deep experience designing and deploying enterprise AI and Generative AI solutions. Strong hands-on experience with:

• Azure AI Foundry
• Azure OpenAI Services
• RAG architectures, Agentic AI solutions
• Prompt Engineering techniques
• LLM evaluation frameworks
• API integrations and cloud-native architectures

Experience with multiple LLM providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, and Google Gemini. Strong software engineering background with proficiency in Python. Familiarity with data science methodologies and machine learning fundamentals. Understanding of vector databases, embeddings, semantic search, and knowledge retrieval architectures.

Experience working with modern enterprise delivery toolsets, including:

• Azure DevOps
• GitHub, GitHub Copilot
• Jira, ServiceNow, CI/CD and DevOps practices

Strong understanding of enterprise application architecture. Working knowledge of networking concepts, cloud connectivity patterns, APIs, authentication, and security controls. Experience collaborating with infrastructure, networking, cybersecurity, and enterprise architecture teams. Ability to evolve solution designs based on architecture and security review feedback.

Qualifications

Preferred Qualifications include:

• Relevant industry qualifications.
• Tertiary Degree or equivalent combination of education and work experience.

Compensation Package

The salary range for this role is provided above. This is the national range for location(s) listed. The salary offer will be decided based on the role's complexity, its location, and the candidate's professional background, including their education and experience. Beyond the base salary, regular full-time and part-time employees will also be eligible for QBE's annual discretionary bonus plan based on business and individual performance. We encourage all candidates to apply, even if their salary expectations fall outside of this range, as we are committed to finding the right fit for our team.

QBE Benefits: We offer a range of benefits to help provide holistic support for your work life, whatever your circumstances. As a QBE employee you will have access to:

• Hybrid Working – a mix of working from home and in the office
• 22 weeks of paid leave for family growth, with 12 weeks available to all parents on a gender-equal basis
• Competitive 401(k) program with company match up to 8%
• Well-being program including holistic wellbeing coaching, gym membership, confidential counselling, financial and legal advice
• Tuition Reimbursement for professional certifications, and continuing education
• Employee Network and Community – QBE actively supports six Employee Networks, and many ways to give back to your community To learn more, click here: Benefits | QBE US.

Why QBE?

What if you could have a positive impact – at work and in the world? At QBE, we're enabling a more resilient future – for our customers, communities, environment, and for our people. We're building momentum to achieve something significant and know our people are at the center of our success. Our industry offers interesting and varied careers where you can help people to protect what matters most. As part of the QBE team, you'll get to spend every day working with people who are passionate, talented and kind. And our international scale means we're big enough for your ambitions, yet small enough for you to make a real impact. Join us now, so you can be part of our success – and we can be part of yours!

QBE is committed to providing reasonable accommodation to, among others, individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans. If you need an accommodation because of a disability to search and apply for a career opportunity with QBE, please inform our Talent Acquisition team to let us know the nature of your accommodation request and your contact information.  

Equal Employment Opportunity: QBE provides equal employment opportunities to applicants and employees without regard to race; color; gender; gender identity; sexual orientation; religious practices and observances; national origin; pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions; protected veteran status; or disability or any other legally protected status. This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship. Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis without the need for current or future sponsorship.

Skills

Analytical Thinking, Application Development, Application Governance, Critical Thinking, Customer Service, Decision Making, Information Technology Applications, Intentional collaboration, Managing performance, Problem Solving, Programming Languages, Project Management, Risk Management, Software Development, Stakeholder Management

How to Apply

To submit your application, click "Apply" and follow the step by step process. QBE is an equal opportunity employer and is required to comply with equal employment opportunity legislation in each jurisdiction it operates.