Principal AI Architect Engineer

Guardian Life Insurance Company: Principal Forward Deployed Engineer
Location: New York/New Jersey Area (Hybrid)

Company Overview:
Guardian Life is a Fortune 250 mutual insurance company committed to protecting our customers’ financial well-being and enriching their lives. Every day, we serve over 27 million people, guided by our values of People Count, We Do the Right Thing, and We Hold Ourselves to Very High Standards. At Guardian, we foster an innovative, collaborative technology culture with a mission to shape the future of insurance and wealth management through data and AI. If you thrive on solving complex problems, building real-world solutions, and driving transformative impact, we’d love for you to join our team.

Position Overview:
We are seeking a Principal AI Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) – an individual contributor at the Principal level – to bridge advanced AI capabilities with Guardian’s business needs and deliver cutting-edge AI solutions across the enterprise. This forward-deployed, builder-led role combines deep architectural expertise with hands-on engineering and close partnership with business stakeholders to drive outcomes. You will be a senior technical authority in our AI Platform Engineering team (reporting to the Head of AI Platform Engineering & Automation) and work directly with leaders in business units like Distribution, Underwriting, Claims, Customer Service, and Operations. Your mission is to design, build, and deploy production-grade AI and agentic systems that embed into real business workflows to deliver measurable business value. You will operate under ambiguity, make high-judgment technical decisions balancing speed and long-term strategy, and ensure Guardian’s AI solutions are pragmatic, scalable, and aligned with enterprise standards. This is a rare opportunity to take a builder’s mindset and bias for action into a Fortune 250 environment – applying the technical leadership, the hands-on architecture and development skill of a Principal Engineer, and the customer-focused, end-to-end ownership of a Forward Deployed Engineer.

Key Responsibilities:

• AI Solution Architecture & Delivery: Design and own the architecture for end-to-end AI systems – from data ingestion and model development to service integration and production deployment. Build and deploy AI/ML-driven applications (including LLM-powered agents, automation workflows, and predictive analytics) that integrate seamlessly into business processes and legacy environments to drive operational outcomes.
• Forward-Deployed Project Leadership: Serve as the technical lead on forward-deployed initiatives across various business units. Partner directly with business stakeholders (from department leads to senior executives) to understand business goals, translate them into technical solutions, and deliver those solutions in fast iteration cycles. Adapt quickly to evolving requirements and ensure solutions solve the right problem with tangible business impact.
• Hands-On Development & Prototyping: Act as a hands-on builder – write production-quality code, quickly prototype new ideas, and lead by example in solving complex technical problems. Transform prototypes into secure, compliant, and scalable production systems in cloud environments (AWS), employing best practices in software engineering, DevOps, and MLOps.
• Strategic Technical Decisions & Vendor Integration: Evaluate build vs. buy decisions with a high degree of judgment. Stay current on emerging AI and data technologies; rapidly assess third-party vendors and open-source solutions for technical fit and strategic value. When appropriate, integrate vendor products to accelerate delivery – architecting for optionality (design solutions to easily plug-and-play or swap vendors) while maintaining alignment with Guardian’s AI Platform strategy and enterprise architecture standards.
• Enterprise Architecture & Standards: Ensure all AI solutions meet Guardian’s high standards for scalability, reliability, security, and compliance. Work closely with data and security teams to architect solutions that protect customer data and comply with regulatory requirements (e.g., privacy, model governance) without stifling innovation. Champion best practices in AI engineering, code quality, and system design to raise the bar across teams.
• Technical Leadership & Influence: Though an individual contributor, act as a senior technical leader within the organization. Conduct architecture reviews and design guidance for multiple teams, mentoring engineers and sharing expertise in AI engineering. Influence without formal authority by driving consensus on technical approaches and long-term AI strategy across cross-functional teams. Communicate complex technical concepts and roadmaps clearly to both technical audiences and senior non-technical stakeholders, including executive leadership.
• End-to-End Ownership & Operational Excellence: Take ownership of outcomes – not just delivering code, but ensuring the solutions achieve the intended business results in production. Oversee the full lifecycle of AI solutions, from initial requirements and PoC to ongoing operation, monitoring, and continual improvement in production. Troubleshoot and resolve issues in real time in live environments, building resilient systems and establishing metrics and feedback loops to drive continuous improvement.

What We’re Looking For (Qualifications):

• Proven Experience in AI & Software Engineering: Extensive experience (typically 8+ years) in software development and architecture, including building AI/ML solutions or large-scale systems in production. Demonstrated success designing and delivering complex systems end-to-end in a high-scale or enterprise environment.
• Enterprise Architectural Depth: Expertise in system design and architecture – able to craft scalable, maintainable designs for distributed systems, data pipelines, and cloud services. Comfortable making high-impact architectural decisions (understanding which are one-way door vs. two-way door decisions) that balance immediate needs with long-term maintainability.
• Hands-On Technical Leadership: Track record of technical leadership in engineering projects – leading design, guiding implementation, and setting technical direction across teams. Skilled at solving ambiguous problems with innovative, well-structured solutions. Passionate about coding and code quality with proficiency in languages and frameworks commonly used for AI (e.g., Python).
• AI/ML & Data Expertise: Strong working knowledge of AI/ML techniques (e.g., machine learning pipelines, model training & evaluation, large language models, generative AI) and experience bringing models or algorithms into production applications. Familiarity with MLOps practices for model deployment and lifecycle management is a plus.
• Cloud & DevOps: Deep experience with cloud platforms (especially AWS) for data and AI solutions, including leveraging cloud-native services for computing, data storage, and AI (for example, AWS SageMaker, Lambda, EMR, etc.). Proficient in modern DevOps/engineering practices – CI/CD, containerization, infrastructure-as-code – ensuring solutions are robust and maintainable in production.
• Business Acumen & Stakeholder Collaboration: Exceptional ability to engage with non-technical stakeholders and senior leadership. Can translate between business objectives and technical strategy seamlessly. Strong communication skills to convey technical ideas in business terms and inspire confidence and alignment. Prior experience working in or with regulated industries (insurance, finance, healthcare) is valuable – you understand how to innovate within enterprise guardrails and handle sensitive data responsibly.
• Bias for Action & Ownership Mindset: You exhibit a bias for action and a builder’s mindset – proactively identifying opportunities, rapidly prototyping solutions, and driving them to completion. You take ownership of outcomes, persisting through obstacles, and are motivated by seeing your technology make a measurable impact on the business.

Technology & Environment (Example Tools & Platforms):
This role operates within Guardian’s modern cloud and data ecosystem. While not all tools are required, experience with similar technologies will be beneficial:

• Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS (Amazon Web Services) – e.g., EC2, S3, Lambda, SageMaker, Bedrock, EKS; Infrastructure-as-Code tools (CloudFormation/Terraform).
• Data & Integration: Modern data platforms and streaming – e.g., Snowflake, Redshift, Kafka/Kinesis, Spark/Databricks, relational and NoSQL databases; Data processing and pipeline frameworks (AWS Glue, Apache Airflow, etc.).
• AI & ML Tooling: Large Language Models and AI services (OpenAI GPT, Anthropic, AWS AI services), machine learning libraries/frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, Scikit-learn), and MLOps pipelines.
• DevOps & Monitoring: Containers and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes), CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins/GitHub Actions), observability tools (CloudWatch, Datadog, etc.) to ensure high operational excellence.

Why Join Guardian’s AI Team as an FDE?
As Guardian’s Principal AI Forward Deployed Engineer, you will spearhead AI innovation at enterprise scale while directly witnessing your solutions driving business outcomes. This is a unique opportunity to move beyond strategy into hands-on delivery – you’ll both shape the strategic architecture and dive deep to build real-world AI applications used by thousands of employees and millions of customers. You will work in a collaborative, people-first culture that values integrity and high standards, with the autonomy to innovate and the backing of leadership to push the boundaries of AI in a Fortune 250 company. If you are excited to combine top-tier engineering skills, AI expertise, and business savvy to build the future of insurance with AI, we’d love to hear from you.

Salary Range:

The salary range reflected above is a good faith estimate of base pay for the primary location of the position. The salary for this position ultimately will be determined based on the education, experience, knowledge, and abilities of the successful candidate. In addition to salary, this role may also be eligible for annual, sales, or other incentive compensation.

Our Promise

At Guardian, you’ll have the support and flexibility to achieve your professional and personal goals.  Through skill-building, leadership development and philanthropic opportunities, we provide opportunities to build communities and grow your career, surrounded by diverse colleagues with high ethical standards.

Inspire Well-Being

As part of Guardian’s Purpose – to inspire well-being – we are committed to offering contemporary, supportive, flexible, and inclusive benefits and resources to our colleagues. Explore our company benefits at www.guardianlife.com/careers/corporate/benefits. Benefits apply to full-time eligible employees. Interns are not eligible for most Company benefits.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Guardian is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to age, race, color, creed, religion, sex, affectional or sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, marital status, disability, military or veteran status, or any other classification protected by applicable law.

Accommodations

Guardian is committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities. Guardian also provides reasonable accommodations to qualified job applicants (and employees) to accommodate the individual's known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, unless doing so would create an undue hardship. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact [email protected]. Please note: this resource is for accommodation requests only. For all other inquires related to your application and careers at Guardian, refer to the Guardian Careers site.

Visa Sponsorship

Guardian is not currently or in the foreseeable future sponsoring employment visas. In order to be a successful applicant. you must be legally authorized to work in the United States, without the need for employer sponsorship.

Notice Regarding Guardian’s Use of Artificial Intelligence in Recruitment

As part of Guardian’s job application process, Guardian may use artificial intelligence tools (“AI Tools") to automate the sorting and filtering of information provided by applicants as part of its preliminary screening. This preliminary screening may be used to help identify applicant materials and resumes relative to their indication that the applicant meets the requirements for the specific job for which they are applying, as specified in the listing posted on Guardian’s jobs website (Careers at Guardian at https://www.guardianlife.com/careers). At Guardian, we do not use AI Tools to substantially assist or replace human judgment or discretionary decision making in our hiring process. All hiring decisions will be made by Guardian colleagues.

Please be aware that if you apply for a specific position with Guardian, you will have the choice of opting out of Guardian’s use of AI Tools during the job application process. If you would like to request an alternative process that does not utilize AI Tools or would like to request a reasonable accommodation, within ten business days of your position application, you must email your request to [email protected], making sure to provide your name and job requisition identification number. Guardian will retain your applicant materials and resume and all information therefrom in accordance with Guardian’s document retention policy, a copy of which you may request via [email protected].

Additionally, at applicable times, Guardian will make public the most recent bias audit results for such AI tools, which may be found here. 

Current Guardian Colleagues: Please apply through the internal Jobs Hub in Workday.