Senior AI Engineer

At Jack Henry, we’re more than a technology company, we’re a force for good in financial services. We’re redefining how community banks and credit unions connect with the people they serve. Our mission is rooted in people inspired innovation, empowering financial institutions to deliver seamless, secure, and human centered experiences. We deliver cutting-edge solutions that are paving the way for the next generation of digital banking and payments, but our true impact begins with our associates. If you're ready to help transform an industry and grow with a company that values purpose, collaboration, and excellence then we’d love to meet you.

This Senior AI Engineer bridges AI experimentation and production engineering. This role is responsible for turning AI prototypes, agents, and platform capabilities into reliable, secure, enterprise-ready solutions. Working closely with engineering, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, and AI enablement teams, they operationalize AI systems that can scale across Jack Henry while meeting compliance and governance requirements.

• AI Platform Engineering: Build and support production AI capabilities including AI Gateway services, MCP integrations, agent frameworks, self-hosted inference, and AI-powered applications.
• Production Readiness & Reliability: Develop testing, evaluation, monitoring, logging, and observability practices that ensure AI systems remain dependable, scalable, and auditable in production.
• Cross-Functional Delivery: Partner with cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, architecture, and business teams to design and deliver AI solutions that meet enterprise standards.
• AI Optimization & Governance: Improve AI system performance through model evaluation, operational monitoring, quality assurance, and continuous improvement practices.
• Technical Leadership & Adoption: Mentor engineers, establish best practices for AI development, and help drive adoption of AI technologies and agentic development workflows across the organization.

This position is a hybrid role requiring at least 1 day per week in any of the following office locations: Allen, TX, Louisville, KY, Birmingham, AL, Cedar Falls, IA, Charlotte, NC, Overland Park, KS, Monett, MO or Springfield, MO.

This position is ineligible for immigration sponsorship and support. Please do not apply if at any time you will need immigration support now or in the future (i.e., H-1B, PERM).

What you'll be responsible for:

• Performs and leads system analysis and programming activities that take AI proofs of concept to production-ready software - including the research needed where no established pattern exists yet, and timely, quality delivery into production.
• Performs, and may lead, technical/engineering support for new and existing applications from code delivery until the retirement of the application.
• Develops, tests and reviews applications based on business requirements and industry best practices. Uses best practices, standard guidance, and agentic development workflows to create and modify code.
• Considers how code changes will affect end users and internal teams.
• Reviews code created by less experienced team members.
• Collaborates with quality and security partners - cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, and AI governance - to ensure timely delivery of high-quality products.
• Performs and may lead work with cross-team as projects dictate.
• Works on and leads critical tasks and deliverables with no assistance, and sets and updates expectations on size, scope, and timelines.
• Participates in and may lead team in cross-functional meetings and discussions.
• Creates required technical documentation.
• Stays updated with emerging AI technologies and industry trends, recommending innovative solutions to improve software development processes.
• Adheres to documented departmental and corporate standards.
• Participates in the definition and documentation of standards - including what "production-ready" means for AI systems at Jack Henry.
• Lead unit tests, integration tests, and evals to ensure the reliability, security, and performance of developed software, especially AI systems and workflows.
• Debugs and troubleshoots issues as they arise, providing timely resolutions - including failure modes specific to AI systems, like quality drift, prompt regressions, provider outages, and cost spikes.
• May contribute to product architecture.
• May Perform other duties as assigned.

What you'll need to have:

• Must have a minimum of 6 years of technical experience in software development.
• Production ownership of AI systems (AI agents, AI features in products, MCP servers, etc).
• Experience with a major cloud environment (GCP, AWS, or Azure).
• Experience with unit testing and end-to-end automated testing.
• Experience with Kubernetes.
• Experience with any of the following: Large language models (LLM), vector databases.
• Comfort with ambiguity and shifting priorities.
• Must be self-directed, and willing to push through roadblocks rather than wait them out.
• Must be able to travel up to 10% to attend internal business meetings, training and/or professional conferences.

What would be nice for you to have:

• Bachelor’s degree.
• Fintech experience.
• Experience with GCP and infrastructure as code (Terraform).
• Experience in cloud security and DevOps.
• Experience with model fine-tuning, evaluation (e.g. controlling for bias), and validation.
• Experience with AI observability, evals, and model monitoring.

If you got this far, we hope you're feeling excited about this opportunity. Even if you don't feel you meet every single requirement on this positing, we still encourage you to apply. We're eager to meet motivated people who align with Jack Henry's mission and can contribute to our company in a variety of ways.

Why Jack Henry?

At Jack Henry, we pride ourselves through our motto of, "Do the right thing, do whatever it takes, and have fun." We recognize the value of our associates and believe much of our company's strength and success depends on their well-being.

We demonstrate our commitment by offering outstanding benefit programs to ensure the physical, mental & financial well-being of our people is always met.

Culture of Commitment

Ask our associates why they love Jack Henry, and many will tell you it is because our culture is exceptional. We do great things together. Rising to meet challenges and seeking opportunities is part of who we are as an organization. Our culture has helped us stay strong through challenging times and we credit our dedicated associates for our success. Visit our Corporate Responsibility site to learn more about our culture and commitment to our people, customers, community, environment, and shareholders.

Equal Employment Opportunity

At Jack Henry, we know we are better together. We value, respect, and protect the uniqueness each of us brings. Innovation flourishes by including all voices and makes our business - and our society - stronger. Jack Henry is an equal opportunity employer and we are committed to providing equal opportunity in all of our employment practices, including selection, hiring, performance management, promotion, transfer, compensation, benefits, education, training, social, and recreational activities to all persons regardless of race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, genetic information, pregnancy, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, and military and veteran status, or any other protected status protected by local, state or federal law.

No one will be subject to, and Jack Henry prohibits, any form of discipline, reprisal, intimidation, or retaliation for good faith reports or complaints of discrimination of any kind, pursuing any discrimination claim, or cooperating in related investigations.

Requests for full corporate job descriptions may be requested through the interview process at any time.