AVP, AI

Manulife • Boston, MA

1d • CA$129,800 - CA$241,200 • Hybrid

About The Position

The AVP, AI – Group Functions AI Transformation Delivery is a senior AI leadership role responsible for leading the end-to-end delivery of AI-enabled transformation across Group Functions, with a primary focus on Risk, Legal, Procurement, and Compliance. A significant portion of this role’s portfolio includes AI enabled fraud detection targeting financial crimes. This role pairs hands-on technical depth with strong delivery leadership to turn functional priorities into deployed, value-generating AI solutions. Operating at the intersection of business strategy and AI engineering, the AVP partners with senior functional leaders to identify high-impact opportunities, shapes pragmatic delivery roadmaps, and leads multidisciplinary teams to build and scale Classical AI, Generative AI, and Agentic AI solutions – all while meeting enterprise standards for security, governance, model risk, and responsible AI.

Requirements

• 8+ years in data science, AI/ML engineering, or applied machine learning, including significant experience leading delivery of complex AI programs at scale.
• Hands-on engineering expertise in Python, cloud ML environments, MLOps, vector databases, LLM-Ops, and modern evaluation frameworks; experience with Agentic AI architectures, orchestration frameworks, and multi-model pipelines is strongly preferred.
• Prior experience with financial crime prevention, including graph-based solutions
• Demonstrated experience partnering with one or more corporate functions – preferably Risk, Legal, Procurement, Compliance, Audit, or Treasury – ideally within financial services.
• Proven people-leadership experience, with the ability to build, coach, and lead high-performing, multidisciplinary delivery teams.
• Strong ability to translate technical concepts into business outcomes and to communicate and influence at the senior-leader level.
• Comfortable operating in a highly matrixed, global environment with a results-driven, ownership mindset.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, or a related field; an advanced degree (Master’s or PhD) is desirable.

Nice To Haves

• experience with Agentic AI architectures, orchestration frameworks, and multi-model pipelines is strongly preferred.
• an advanced degree (Master’s or PhD) is desirable.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end delivery of AI solutions for Risk, Legal, Procurement, Compliance, and other Group Functions – from opportunity shaping and design through deployment, adoption, and value realization.
• Own delivery roadmaps and execution across a portfolio of concurrent initiatives, ensuring measurable business outcomes against defined success metrics.
• Direct multidisciplinary delivery teams (AI/ML engineers, data scientists, product, and functional SMEs), removing blockers and ensuring quality, velocity, and accountability.
• Conduct full-stack AI engineering work, including hands-on development, prototyping, and architecture decisions where needed to accelerate delivery.
• Partner with leaders in Risk, Legal, and Procurement to surface high-impact AI opportunities and articulate clear value cases.
• Translate functional needs into well-structured initiatives aligned with enterprise AI strategy and capabilities.
• Provide thought leadership on Agentic AI, Generative AI, and machine learning, and advise functional leaders on use cases, readiness, risk considerations, and operating-model changes.
• Coach stakeholders to drive adoption and embed AI into functional workflows and decision-making.
• Ensure all solutions meet enterprise standards for security, data governance, model risk management, and responsible AI.
• Coordinate with Enterprise Architecture, Risk, Legal, and the Global Data Office to deliver secure, compliant, and scalable solutions.
• Promote reuse of enterprise components, shared codebases/libraries, and aligned architecture across initiatives.
• Represent Group Functions AI delivery in enterprise governance and portfolio forums, ensuring functional initiatives accelerate enterprise impact.

Benefits

• health, dental, mental health, vision, short- and long-term disability, life and AD&D insurance coverage, adoption/surrogacy and wellness benefits, and employee/family assistance plans.
• various retirement savings plans (including pension and a global share ownership plan with employer matching contributions) and financial education and counseling resources.
• generous paid time off program in Canada includes holidays, vacation, personal, and sick days, and we offer the full range of statutory leaves of absence.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior