Lead, Machine Learning Engineer, GFT

Royal Bank of Canada • Toronto, ON

3d • Onsite

About The Position

As a Senior Manager, AI and ML, you will be working on solving core business problems in compliance (trade surveillance, managing regulatory insights, etc) by leveraging AI and ML to optimize business processes and facilitate informed decision making. You will get the opportunity to work on cutting-edge technology and complex problems that generate significant value and have a high long-term impact on the bank’s growth.

Requirements

• PhD or Masters in a quantitative discipline such as computer science, mathematics, statistics, or engineering
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills; ability to work collaboratively with cross-functional teams including business, engineering, and risk management
• 7+ years of expert level programming experience in Python (preferable) and other languages is a must – ability to write production level code and documentation
• 5+ years’ experience working with large unstructured and structured datasets - exploring and understanding data, cleaning and pre-processing, performing exploratory data analysis, generating business insights and communicating them in a clear, concise manner
• 5+ years’ experience developing and deploying models in production for real business problems
• Knowledge of standard machine learning libraries like numpy, pandas, scikit learn and visualization packages like seaborn or matplotllib, etc and machine learning algorithms like logistic regression, tree based models, decision trees, random forests, etc
• Strong understanding and work experience with core NLP and Generative AI like embeddings, text pre-processing, RNN’s, Transformer architecture, fine-tuning models, prompting techniques, etc
• Demonstrated experience designing and implementing Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures, including vector databases, embedding models, and retrieval pipelines
• Experience building and deploying RESTful APIs for ML model serving (FastAPI, Flask)
• Experience with MLOps practices, model serving, monitoring, and CI/CD pipelines for ML systems
• Experience working with version control – git and linux.

Nice To Haves

• Experience building autonomous AI agents and multi-agent orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LangGraph, AutoGen)
• Prior experience in financial services, particularly in Compliance, Risk, or Regulatory Technology
• Experience working with big data, pyspark, scala
• Experience working with deep learning – RNN’s, Transformer models, etc
• 2+ years’ experience working with Deep Learning Frameworks like Tensorflow or Pytorch

Responsibilities

• Work on challenging business problems by leveraging large RBC data, translating them into machine learning problems and applying advanced machine learning algorithms to generate business value
• Lead the end-to-end lifecycle of AI/ML initiatives—from ideation and POC through development, deployment, and production support
• Design and implement Generative AI solutions, including Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems, LLM-powered agents, and NLP pipelines
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to team members, fostering a culture of innovation and continuous learning
• Collaborate with engineering, architecture, and model risk management teams to ensure solutions meet enterprise standards for scalability, security, and governance
• Stay current with emerging AI/ML technologies and evaluate their applicability to Compliance use cases
• Communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders and senior leadership

Benefits

• A comprehensive Total Rewards Program including bonuses and flexible benefits, competitive compensation, commissions, and stock where applicable
• Leaders who support your development through coaching and managing opportunities
• Ability to make a difference and lasting impact
• Work in a dynamic, collaborative, progressive, and high-performing team
• A world-class training program in financial services
• Opportunities to do challenging work
• Opportunities to take on progressively greater accountabilities
• Opportunities to build close relationships with clients
• Access to a variety of job opportunities across business and geographies

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree
• Number of Employees: 101-250 employees