{"id":2630615,"url":"https://alion.io/job/finra-associate-director-lead-engineer-genai","title":"Associate Director / Lead Engineer, GenAI","company":{"id":1753478,"name":"Finra","domain":"finra.org","url":"https://alion.io/company/finra","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workday","truth_index":null},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"head","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Rockville, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":114200,"max":null,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":114200},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Agile","optional":false},{"name":"ITIL","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"Threat Modeling","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-11T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-11","last_verified_at":"2026-10-25T08:59:34Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":76,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":76},"description":"The Associate Director / Lead Engineer leads a small team of software engineers responsible for designing and delivering the data pipelines, retrieval systems, and knowledge integrations that power a generative AI platform. This role combines technical leadership with people management - setting architectural direction, removing blockers, and ensuring the team delivers high-quality, scalable solutions. The Associate Director /Lead Engineer balances hands-on technical involvement with strategic planning, stakeholder communication, and team development.Essential Job Functions:\nDirectly manage team(s) focused on delivering high quality project results within one or more major technology disciplines: strategy, software development, operations, engineering, development services, information security, and compliance.\nFocus on team leadership, delivery of business value, risk mitigation, cost optimization and return on investment.\nDeliver results based upon FINRA annual goals, department goals and management requests.\nDirect and coordinate organization's financial and budget activities to fund operations, maximize investments, and increase efficiency for a project(s).\nEnsure technology best practices are being implemented and improved within team(s).\nAnalyze information and evaluate results to choose the best solutions and solve problems.\nSupport the evaluation of new technologies, techniques, and tools.\nReport status and issues to senior Technology management team.\nWork directly with outside vendors to negotiate services and product agreements\nWillingness to lead, take responsibility and offer options.\nServe as a backup to more senior level management as needed.\nDevelop constructive and cooperative working relationships with peers both within and outside of Technology, and maintain them over time.\nEstablish and maintain external relationships with strategic product/service vendors and industry forums (government & private councils, standards bodies, product forums, etc.), as appropriate.\nContribute to the establishment, evolution and continued compliance with standard practices and processes within the disciplines.\nAssist with adherence to technology policies and comply with all security controls.\nEnsure all work products meets/exceeds FINRA standards and risks are effectively managed.\nParticipate in periodic Disaster Recovery (DR), Business Continuity Planning (BCP) and Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) testing and reporting.\nResource Management:\nIdentify and hire resource/skills needed within their organization.\nResponsible for staff performance management and training.\nCoordinate assignment of subordinate staff.\nDemonstration of FINRA’s values.\nCollaboration, both in-person and virtually, in furtherance of FINRA’s mission of investor protection and market integrity.\nKey Responsibilities:\nTechnical Leadership & Architecture\n· Set the technical vision and architectural direction for knowledge framework integrations, including data ingestion, embedding pipelines, and retrieval systems\n· Make key design decisions on pipeline architecture, data modeling, and search strategies, balancing quality, performance, and delivery timelines\n· Evaluate and recommend technologies, frameworks, and approaches for knowledge integration challenges\n· Maintain sufficient hands-on involvement to provide credible technical guidance and unblock the team on complex problems\n· Demonstrate solid understanding of systems and processes within the domain and recommend improvements\nTeam Leadership & People Management\n· Manage, mentor, and develop a small team of software engineers, fostering a culture of ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement\n· Conduct regular one-on-ones, provide constructive feedback, and support career growth for direct reports\n· Plan and prioritize team workload, balancing feature delivery, technical debt, and operational responsibilities\n· Recruit, onboard, and ramp new team members as the team scales\n· Champion collaborative resolution of defects and lead internal process improvement initiatives\nEngineering Excellence & Quality\n· Establish and enforce engineering standards for code quality, testing, documentation, and peer review across the team\n· Guide the team in best practices for data pipeline development, retrieval system design, and test automation\n· Ensure comprehensive test coverage including unit testing, integration testing, and retrieval quality evaluation\n· Drive adoption of test-driven development (TDD) practices and automated quality gates\nPlanning & Delivery\n· Own the team's roadmap and delivery commitments, translating business requirements into actionable technical plans\n· Break down complex integration initiatives into well-scoped work items with clear acceptance criteria\n· Track progress, identify risks early, and adjust plans to meet deadlines without sacrificing quality\n· Provide regular status updates and delivery forecasts to leadership\nStakeholder Collaboration\n· Partner with product, platform engineering, and agent development teams to align knowledge integration priorities with broader platform goals\n· Communicate complex or technical information at the appropriate level for diverse audiences including leadership, peers, and external partners\n· Represent the team in cross-functional planning sessions, architecture reviews, and prioritization discussions\n· Build strong working relationships across the organization to facilitate collaboration and shared accountability\nGenerative AI & Emerging Technologies\n· Stay informed of advances in RAG architectures, embedding models, retrieval optimization, and knowledge management approaches\n· Evaluate emerging technologies and techniques for applicability to the team's work, making build-vs-buy recommendations\n· Drive innovation within the team by creating space for experimentation and proof-of-concept work\nSecurity & Compliance\n· Ensure all team deliverables meet or exceed organizational standards for secure development practices\n· Oversee secure handling of sensitive domain data throughout the ingestion and retrieval lifecycle\n· Assist with adherence to technology policies and ensure the team complies with all security controls\n· Participate in threat modeling and security discussions for data pipeline and infrastructure components\nEducation/Experience Requirements:\nBachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems or related discipline with at least five (5) years of related experience, or equivalent training and/or work experience; Master’s degree and past Financial Services industry experience preferred.\n\nMinimum of 3 years of managing technical programs and/or processes including staff management of at least four (4) resources and budget of at least $1 million annually.\n\nKnowledge of business, technology and management principles involved in strategic planning, organizational change management, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership technique, and coordination of people and resources.\n\nExperience must include direct project experience in one of the following areas: strategy, software development, operations, engineering, development services, information security, and/or compliance.\n\nExtensive knowledge of industry leading technology best practices including familiarity with technology methodologies including at least one of ISO-9000, ITIL, Agile and iterative.\n\nExcellent written and verbal technical communication skills.\n\nDemonstrated ability to develop effective working relationships and leverage those relationships to improve the quality of work products.\n\nMust be able to identify, evaluate and recommend processes, tools, technologies and/or products to meet business and budgetary requirements.\n\nShould be well organized, thorough, and able to handle competing priorities.\n\nAbility to maintain focus and develop proficiency in new skills rapidly.\n\nAbility to work in a fast paced environment.\n\nWork Conditions:\nHybrid work environment, with defined in-person presence requirements.\n\nOccasional travel and extended hours may be required.\n\nFor work that is performed in CO, FL, TX, IL, PA, MA, MD, VA, Washington, DC, NY and NJ, please refer to the chart below for the salary range for the corresponding location. FINRA complies with all state and local pay transparency laws and regulations requiring the disclosure of salary ranges for the position. In addition to location, actual compensation is based on various factors, including but not limited to, the candidate’s skill set, level of experience, education, and market considerations.\nCO/FL/TX: Minimum Salary $114,200, Maximum Salary $207,200\nIL/PA: Minimum Salary $125,900, Maximum Salary $228,000\nMA/MD/VA/Washington, DC: Minimum Salary $131,200, Maximum Salary $238,300\nNY/NJ: Minimum Salary $131,200, Maximum Salary $248,700\nTo be considered for this position, please submit an application. Applications are accepted on an ongoing basis.\nThe information provided above has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work of the position. It is not a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities and qualifications required.\nPlease note: If the “Apply Now” button on a job board posting does not take you directly to the FINRA Careers site, enter www.finra.org/careers into your browser to reach our site directly.\nEmployees may be eligible for a discretionary bonus in addition to base pay. Non-exempt employees are also eligible for overtime pay in accordance with federal, state, or local law. As part of its dedication to employee wellness, FINRA provides comprehensive health, dental and vision insurance. Additional insurance includes basic life, accidental death and dismemberment, supplemental life, spouse/domestic partner and dependent life, and spouse/domestic partner and dependent accidental death and dismemberment, short- and long-term disability, long-term care, business travel accident, disability and legal. FINRA offers immediate participation and vesting in a 401(k) plan with company match and eligibility for participation in an additional FINRA-funded retirement contribution, tuition reimbursement, commuter benefits, and other benefits that support employee wellness, such as adoption assistance, backup family care, surrogacy benefits, employee assistance, and wellness programs.\nTime Off and Paid Leave*\nFINRA encourages its employees to focus on their health and wellness in many ways, including through a generous time-off program of 15 days of paid time off, 5 personal days and 9 sick days, unless otherwise required by law (all pro-rated in the first year). Additionally, we are proud to support our communities by providing two volunteer service days (based on full-time schedule). Other paid leave includes military leave, jury duty leave, bereavement leave, voting and election official leave for federal, state or local primary and general elections, care of a family member leave (available after 90 days of employment); and childbirth and parental leave (available after 90 days of employment). Full-time employees receive nine paid holidays.\n*Based on full-time schedule\nImportant Information\nFINRA’s Code of Conduct imposes restrictions on employees’ investments and requires financial disclosures that are uniquely related to our role as a securities regulator. FINRA employees are required to disclose to FINRA all brokerage accounts that they maintain, and those in which they control trading or have a financial interest (including any trust account of which they are a trustee or beneficiary and all accounts of a spouse, domestic partner or minor child who lives with the employee) and to authorize their broker-dealers to provide FINRA with duplicate statements for all of those accounts. All of those accounts are subject to the Code’s investment and securities account restrictions, and new employees must comply with those investment restrictions-including disposing of any security issued by a company on FINRA’s Prohibited Comp...","description_format":"text","description_chars":14648,"description_truncated":true,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Hybrid work","Parental leave","Vision insurance","Wellness"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":[],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-15T16:01:19Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":11,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.382,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":76,"expected_fill_days":15,"reasons":["conf:20","velocity","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-26T05:57:25Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":114200,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/finra-associate-director-lead-engineer-genai","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/finra-associate-director-lead-engineer-genai.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-26T06:56:55Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":9271,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-27T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":1753478},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=1753478"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Ffinra-associate-director-lead-engineer-genai"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Ffinra-associate-director-lead-engineer-genai"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Ffinra-associate-director-lead-engineer-genai"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/finra-associate-director-lead-engineer-genai\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Ffinra-associate-director-lead-engineer-genai"}]}