Chief AI Architect

Vanguard•Malvern, PA

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Chief AI Architect for Advice & Wealth Management shapes and evolves the AI architecture underpinning advice delivery, client experiences, operational efficiency, and decision intelligence. This role ensures both traditional machine learning and generative AI capabilities are applied in a practical, business-focused way—balancing innovation with responsible AI practices, scalability, and operational excellence. Partnering closely with business, product, and engineering teams, the Chief AI Architect provides architectural leadership to define how AI is used across the portfolio, establishing patterns, guardrails, and platforms that enable sustainable adoption and measurable outcomes.

Requirements

Deep expertise across both traditional ML and generative AI architectures.
Proven ability to apply AI to real business use cases, moving solutions from concept to production.
Experience designing AI systems that are secure, observable, and scalable.
Strong understanding of model lifecycle management (training, deployment, monitoring, retraining).
Experience establishing responsible AI governance and controls.
Knowledge of AI/ML platforms, cloud-native patterns, and integration approaches (e.g. MCP, A2A, etc.).
Ability to influence senior stakeholders and collaborate across business and technology.

Responsibilities

Define and execute the AI architecture roadmap for Advice & Wealth Management in partnership and collaboration with other organizations.
Establish architecture patterns for both traditional ML and generative AI, including deployment and monitoring.
Help business and product leaders understand how they can leverage AI to solve their business problems.
Influence enterprise guardrails and standards for responsible AI usage (evaluation, observability, model performance, and risk management).
Establish repeatable patterns for integrating AI into applications, workflows, and platforms.
Partner with data architecture to ensure AI-ready data foundations (quality, governance, lineage).
Guide teams on build vs. buy vs. partner decisions for AI capabilities and platforms.
Research emerging AI technologies and patterns; translate into practical recommendations and investment proposals.
Influence senior leadership on AI strategy, investment priorities, and sequencing.
Coach and mentor architects and senior engineers in AI architecture and design practices.
Defining GenAI and agent-based architecture patterns (e.g., RAG, orchestration layers, evaluation frameworks).
Establishing AI observability and monitoring practices across all solutions.
Driving AI adoption in advice workflows (advisor assist, client engagement, operations automation).
Creating clear guidance on when and how to use AI vs. traditional approaches.
Partnering with Data Architecture to ensure AI-ready data foundations.
Integrating AI capabilities across multiple Vanguard systems and third-party platforms.
Partnering with Enterprise AI & Engineering Platforms organization to shape enterprise AI reference architecture and technology that supports AWMT AI priorities