AI Principal Engineer
Together we fight for everyone’s opportunity for a better financial future.
We will do this together - with customers, partners and colleagues. We will fight for others, not against: We will stand up for and champion everyone’s access to opportunities. The status quo is not good enough … we believe every individual and every community deserves access to financial opportunities. We are determined to support both individuals and communities in reaching a better financial future. We know that reaching this future depends on our actions today.
Like our Purpose Statement, Voya believes in being bold and committed to action. We are committed to a work environment where the differences that we are born with - and those we acquire throughout our lives - are understood, valued and intentionally pursued. We believe that our employees own our culture and have a responsibility to foster an environment where we all feel comfortable bringing our whole selves to work. Purposefully bringing our differences together to positively influence our culture, serve our clients and enrich our communities is essential to our vision.
Are you ready to join a company with a strong purpose and a winning culture? Start your Voyage -Apply Now
Get to Know the Opportunity:
The AI Principal Engineer (IC Director) is responsible for leading the design, development, and delivery of complex, production-grade AI solutions that drive meaningful business outcomes. This role serves as a senior technical leader across multiple initiatives, owning significant platform components and domains while influencing architecture, engineering standards, and solution quality.
Operating with a high degree of independence, the AI Principal Engineer partners closely with product, engineering, data, and governance stakeholders to deliver scalable, reliable, and secure AI solutions in a highly regulated environment. This role plays a critical part in ensuring AI capabilities are aligned to enterprise standards, responsible AI principles, and long-term business objectives.
This role is fully remote, with no regular in-office requirement.
The Contributions You’ll Make:
- Lead the design, development, and deployment of complex AI solutions, including LLM-based applications, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, and model-driven services.
- Own technical direction for major AI platform components, products, or functional domains.
- Establish and drive engineering best practices for model evaluation, validation, testing, monitoring, and operationalization.
- Partner with product, business, and data stakeholders to translate business requirements into scalable AI solutions.
- Contribute to architectural decisions related to model selection, system integrations, API design, and platform scalability.
- Ensure AI solutions comply with enterprise standards for security, privacy, governance, and responsible AI.
- Mentor and guide engineering team members while promoting technical excellence and engineering quality.
- Identify technical risks, dependencies, and implementation challenges, and develop appropriate mitigation strategies.
- Drive delivery outcomes across multiple initiatives while maintaining high standards for reliability, performance, and maintainability.
- Influence engineering practices and contribute to continuous improvement across AI development and deployment processes.
Minimum Knowledge & Experience:
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field required.
- Significant experience designing, developing, and delivering production AI/ML systems.
- Experience deploying, operationalizing, and maintaining AI/ML models in production environments.
- Strong proficiency in programming languages such as Python, TypeScript, or Rust.
- Experience with AI/ML frameworks, large language model (LLM) technologies, and modern data pipelines.
- Deep understanding of model lifecycle management, MLOps practices, and production reliability principles.
- Demonstrated success leading complex technical initiatives with significant business impact.
- Strong analytical, problem-solving, and systems-thinking capabilities.
- Proven ability to collaborate effectively across technical and non-technical disciplines.
Preferred Knowledge & Experience:
- Advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field preferred.
- Experience building and supporting enterprise-scale generative AI solutions.
- Experience with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vector databases, and AI orchestration frameworks.
- Familiarity with cloud-native AI platforms and modern distributed system architectures.
- Experience operating within regulated industries and governance-focused environments.
- Knowledge of responsible AI frameworks, model risk management, and AI compliance practices.
- Experience mentoring engineers and influencing technical strategy across multiple teams.
Compensation Pay Disclosure:
Voya is committed to pay that’s fair and equitable, which means comparable pay for comparable roles and responsibilities.
The below annual base salary range reflects the expected hiring range(s) for this position in the location(s) listed. In addition to base salary, Voya offers incentive opportunities (i.e., annual cash incentives, sales incentives, and/or long-term incentives) based on the role to reward the achievement of annual performance objectives. Please note that this salary information is solely for candidates hired to perform work within one of these locations, and refers to the amount Voya Financial is willing to pay at the time of this posting.
Actual compensation offered may vary from the posted salary range based upon the candidate’s geographic location, work experience, education, licensure requirements and/or skill level and will be finalized at the time of offer. Salaries for part-time roles will be prorated based upon the agreed upon number of hours to be regularly worked.
$149,820 - $198,370 USDBe Well. Stay Well.
Voya provides the resources that can make a difference in your lives. To us, this means thriving physically, financially, socially and emotionally. Voya benefits are designed to help you do just that. That’s why we offer an array of plans, programs, tools and resources with one goal in mind: To help you and your family be well and stay well.
What We Offer
- Health, dental, vision and life insurance plans
- 401(k) Savings plan - with generous company matching contributions (up to 6%)
- Voya Retirement Plan - employer paid cash balance retirement plan (4%)
- Tuition reimbursement up to $5,250/year
- Paid time off - including 20 days paid time off, nine paid company holidays and a flexible Diversity Celebration Day.
- Paid volunteer time - 40 hours per calendar year
Learn more about Voya benefits (download PDF)
Critical Skills
At Voya, we have identified the following critical skills which are key to success in our culture:
- Customer Focused: Passionate drive to delight our customers and offer unique solutions that deliver on their expectations.
- Critical Thinking: Thoughtful process of analyzing data and problem solving data to reach a well-reasoned solution.
- Team Mentality: Partnering effectively to drive our culture and execute on our common goals.
- Business Acumen: Appreciation and understanding of the financial services industry in order to make sound business decisions.
- Learning Agility: Openness to new ways of thinking and acquiring new skills to retain a competitive advantage.
Learn more aboutCritical Skills
Equal Employment Opportunity
Voya Financial is an equal-opportunity employer. Voya Financial provides equal opportunity to qualified individuals regardless of race, color, sex, national origin, citizenship status, religion, age, disability, veteran status, creed, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, or any other status protected by state or local law.
Reasonable Accommodations
Voya is committed to the inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, Voya will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations. 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, pleasereference resources for applicants with disabilities.