Senior Manager, AI Enablement Engineering

About Vanguard

Founded in 1975, Vanguard is one of the world's leading investment management companies. The firm offers investments, advice, and retirement services to tens of millions of individual investors around the globe-directly, through workplace plans, and through financial intermediaries.

Vanguard India

Vanguard’s office in India is a significant milestone in our global expansion. We are committed to establishing an enduring technology center in Hyderabad, Telangana and are excited to be adding talent who will focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI), mobile, and cloud-based technologies that drive our business outcomes and deliver a world-class experience for our clients.

Role Summary

This role leads the development and adoption of AI-enabled engineering capabilities across the product development lifecycle. It combines hands-on technical leadership with responsibility for guiding a small team of highly technical professionals. The role partners with product managers, engineering leaders, architects, and global technology teams to build, experiment with, and deploy AI tools and practices that help teams deliver products faster and with greater quality. The successful candidate will bring strong architecture and engineering experience, remain actively involved in technical work, and operate as a player-coach rather than as a traditional program manager.

Responsibilities

• Hires, evaluates, and supervises crew. Provides guidance, coaching, and training as necessary to develop crew. Sets performance standards, reviews performance, and makes informed compensation decisions in accordance with all applicable Human Resources policies and procedures.
• Provides hands-on technical leadership for the design, development, prototyping, and implementation of AI-enabled engineering tools, components, plugins, interfaces, reusable skills, and development harnesses.
• Drives the application of AI across the full product development lifecycle, from idea and discovery through architecture, engineering, testing, implementation, production deployment, and continuous improvement.
• Leads as a player-coach by directing a small team of highly technical professionals toward the highest-value opportunities while remaining actively involved in solution design and building.
• Partners with product managers, engineering leaders, architects, and technology teams in India and the United States to co-build solutions and deploy AI-enabled tools and practices.
• Explores emerging developments in AI and software engineering, evaluates their relevance, and converts promising ideas into controlled experiments, working solutions, and reusable capabilities.
• Coaches product and engineering teams on the effective adoption of AI tools, practices, and reusable components to improve development speed, quality, and outcomes.
• Provides technical oversight and promotes sound architecture, engineering standards, risk awareness, controls, and responsible implementation of AI-enabled capabilities.
• Builds and maintains strategic relationships across sites, departments, divisions, and internal and external partners to support enterprise adoption and delivery.
• Communicates technical direction, progress, decisions, risks, and outcomes clearly to technical teams, product partners, and senior leadership.
• Participates in special projects and performs other duties as assigned.

Qualifications and Skills

• Minimum 10 years of experience in information technology, software engineering, architecture, or product development, with experience across the full product development lifecycle.
• Bachelor’s degree (B.E./B.Tech) in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Proven experience as a hands-on technical lead, solution architect, engineering architect, principal engineer, senior engineer, or equivalent technical leader.
• Practical proficiency with AI-native engineering tools and approaches. Experience with Claude Code or comparable AI coding assistants, including plugins, integrations, interfaces, reusable skills, or related development ecosystems, is preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to contribute directly to technical design, system architecture, prototypes, code, integrations, or production-oriented solutions.
• Strong understanding of modern software architecture, system design, engineering practices, product delivery, implementation, and production operations.
• Experience leading or guiding a small, highly technical team while remaining actively involved in technical work.
• Ability to identify and apply emerging AI capabilities to build faster, better, and more effective products.
• Strong learning agility and curiosity, with a consistent focus on staying current in a rapidly evolving AI environment.
• Self-driven and execution-oriented approach, with the ability to take ideas from exploration through experimentation, implementation, and adoption.
• Strong critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, and verbal and written communication skills.
• Ability to work effectively across functions and geographies and to partner with product, engineering, architecture, and leadership teams.
• Experience in financial services or another highly regulated enterprise environment is preferred.
• This role is best suited to a current hands-on technical leader. Profiles focused primarily on project or program management, Agile coaching, Scrum leadership, or long-term people management without recent technical contribution may not align with the role.

Location

This role is based in Hyderabad, Telangana at Vanguard India. Only qualified external applicants will be considered.

Our mission

Vanguard adheres to a simple purpose: To take a stand for all investors, to treat them fairly, and to give them the best chance for investment success.

Our commitment to you

Vanguard takes the same long-term view of your success-at work and in life-with Benefits and Rewards packages that reflect what you care about, throughout all the phases and stages of your life. Our Total Rewards programs provide you and your loved ones with wellness support for key areas in your life:

Financial wellness

We're committed to enabling your financial success and provide competitive offers and programs.

Physical wellness

We're committed to providing benefits that support your physical health and wellness.

Personal wellness

We're committed to providing resources that help support the full scope of your life.

How we work

Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for most of our employees (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.