Lead AI Ops Engineer - Infrastructure

USAA • San Antonio, TX

1d • $127,310 - $243,340 • Onsite

About The Position

The Lead AI Ops Engineer owns the technical design and architecture for the Infrastructure AI Ops domain’s most ambiguous or consequential builds, while personally implementing and shipping the hardest components. The role establishes reusable technical standards and patterns for telemetry-based feature pipelines, topology graphs, and infrastructure-as-code remediation, and guides the progression of infrastructure use cases toward guarded or self-healing automation in partnership with the Director. The engineer develops the evidence needed to justify autonomy and production readiness, serves as the primary technical escalation point during major incidents—including making real-time decisions about halting automation—and leads postmortems that feed lessons back into engineering standards. The role also mentors Senior engineers while continuing to ship production code and infrastructure-as-code regularly.

This position is based in San Antonio, Texas, with an onsite requirement of five days per week. Relocation assistance is not available. USAA does not provide visa sponsorship for this role.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree, or four years of relevant education and/or experience.
• At least 7 years of hands-on infrastructure, platform, or site-reliability engineering experience, including sustained ownership of production systems at meaningful scale.
• Track record as a de facto technical authority on a team, including leading technical design reviews and setting engineering standards for senior-level engineers.
• Deep expertise productionizing ML models for infrastructure operational data using frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, or scikit-learn.
• Advanced hands-on expertise with infrastructure-as-code and orchestration tools such as Terraform, Ansible, and Kubernetes operators, including setting team conventions.
• Demonstrated experience designing and defending production automation executed against a regulated institution’s production infrastructure, including defensible approval-gate and rollback designs.
• Demonstrated judgment under real incident pressure, including the credibility and experience to halt automation during an incident.

Nice To Haves

• Experience establishing technical standards, architecture patterns, and engineering practices for Infrastructure AI Ops solutions adopted across engineering teams.
• Experience as a senior technical escalation point during critical production incidents, providing technical leadership and decisions for complex infrastructure automation solutions.
• Experience designing and implementing scalable operational AI evaluation, safety, and control frameworks adopted across multiple teams or functions.
• Experience designing or operating highly autonomous, self-healing infrastructure, including production remediation and the technical controls, validation, governance, and evidence needed to support implementation.
• Experience representing engineering in engagements with Model Risk Management, Internal Audit, or similar governance functions, communicating and resolving complex technical, risk, and control considerations.
• US military experience through military service or as a military spouse/domestic partner.

Responsibilities

• Own technical design and architecture for the domain’s highest-ambiguity or highest-consequence AIOps builds, personally shipping the hardest components.
• Set technical standards and reusable patterns for telemetry-consuming feature pipelines, topology-graph design, and infrastructure-as-code remediation scaffolding.
• Lead the domain’s progression toward guarded or self-healing automation, deciding with the Director which use cases are ready to advance and owning the supporting evidence package.
• Serve as the primary technical escalation point during major incidents, including making real-time decisions about the kill switch.
• Lead postmortems and incorporate lessons into updated technical standards.
• Mentor Senior engineers on technical depth and judgment, helping grow the next Lead.
• Regularly ship production code and infrastructure-as-code.

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans.
• 401(k) and pension.
• Life insurance.
• Parental benefits.
• Adoption assistance.
• Paid time off, including paid holidays and 16 paid volunteer hours.
• Wellness programs.
• Career path planning and continuing education.
• Employees may be eligible for pay incentives based on overall corporate and individual performance and at the discretion of the USAA Board of Directors.

What This Job Offers

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