Lead AI Software Engineer

Role Summary

Positions are available in our New York City office or with our AI Engineering squad in Harbor Point, Baltimore, MD. In either location, you will join a collaborative team of engineers, product owners, and business partners building high-impact AI products with leverage across the firm. 

As a Lead Software Engineer on T. Rowe Price Labs' AI Engineering team, you will lead the architecture, design, and delivery of complex production-grade AI agents and intelligent systems. You will lead the incubation of new AI products, drive experimentation with emerging technologies and innovative ideas, and partner with business-aligned technology teams to enable broader adoption at scale. 

This is a hands-on technical leadership role for someone with deep software and AI engineering expertise who enjoys solving complex and ambiguous problems, mentoring engineers, and shaping technical direction. You will guide reusable AI capabilities, influence engineering standards across teams, and help define the future of AI engineering at T. Rowe Price. 

Responsibilities 

• Lead the architecture, design, development, deployment, and evolution of complex production-grade AI agents and intelligent systems.  
• Set technical direction for AI solutions, making informed trade-offs across models, orchestration patterns, retrieval, tools, data, infrastructure, latency, cost, security, reliability, and long-term maintainability.  
• Lead teams through ambiguous and technically complex AI problems, from experimentation and architecture through production adoption and scale.  
• Define and evolve engineering standards for production AI, including evaluation, testing, observability, guardrails, failure handling, security, and responsible deployment.  
• Guide the development of reusable AI capabilities and shared platform components across areas such as agent orchestration, tool use, retrieval-based systems, evaluation frameworks, observability, and guardrails.  
• Evaluate emerging models, frameworks, tools, and AI engineering approaches and provide technical direction on when and how they should be adopted.  
• Provide hands-on technical leadership and mentorship to engineers, raising the bar on architecture, engineering quality, problem solving, and execution.  
• Lead technical design and code reviews and help resolve complex engineering challenges across teams and systems.  
• Drive the Build-Operate-Transfer model by incubating new AI products, hardening them for production, and partnering with business-aligned technology teams to transition proven solutions for long-term ownership and scale.  
• Ensure AI systems achieve measurable quality, production readiness, operational observability, appropriate safety controls, and sustainable total cost of ownership.  
• Identify opportunities for shared AI platforms and abstractions, balancing reusable enterprise capabilities with product-specific requirements.  
• Identify and pursue opportunities to apply AI in ways that accelerate workflows, improve decision-making, and create scalable business impact across the firm.  

Business Knowledge 

• Engage directly with business stakeholders, product owners, senior partners, and technology leaders to understand priorities and shape solution and technical direction.  
• Translate complex and ambiguous business needs into robust AI solutions and architectures that support both immediate value and broader enterprise adoption.  
• Apply strong product and engineering judgment to balance innovation, scalability, business value, risk, cost, security, and long-term maintainability.  
• Influence technical decisions across initiatives and communicate complex AI concepts, architectures, risks, and trade-offs effectively to technical and non-technical audiences.  

Qualifications 

Required:

• BS or MS in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience, with 8+ years of progressive software engineering experience.  
• Extensive hands-on software engineering experience in object-oriented languages such as Python, Java, or JavaScript/TypeScript, including experience leading technical delivery across teams or major initiatives.  
• Deep hands-on experience designing and delivering AI-enabled systems, intelligent workflows, or agentic applications in production or near-production environments.  
• Strong expertise in modern AI engineering patterns such as agent orchestration, tool/function calling, retrieval-based systems, prompt and context engineering, evaluation, observability, guardrails, and failure handling.  
• Demonstrated ability to architect production AI systems and make informed trade-offs across model capability, quality, latency, cost, reliability, security, and maintainability.  
• Extensive experience architecting and delivering cloud-native solutions using AWS or equivalent, containerized microservices, APIs, and modern software delivery practices.  
• Strong understanding of evaluation and testing strategies for AI systems, including approaches for measuring and improving non-deterministic system behavior.  
• Exceptional analytical, problem-solving, architecture, and system-design skills, with demonstrated ability to lead engineers through complex and ambiguous technical challenges.  
• Demonstrated commitment to engineering excellence through setting and upholding standards for automated testing, code reviews, observability, security, and continuous delivery.  
• Strong communication and influence skills, with the ability to shape technical direction across engineering, product, business, and senior stakeholders.  
• Demonstrated experience mentoring engineers and raising technical capability across teams.  
• Passion for staying current with the rapidly evolving AI landscape and the judgment to distinguish promising technologies from short-lived trends.  

Preferred:

• Experience establishing engineering standards or technical direction across multiple teams. 
• Understanding of financial markets, asset management, or financial instruments. 

FINRA Requirements

FINRA licenses are not required and will not be supported for this role.

Work Flexibility

This role is eligible for hybrid work, with up to three days per week from home.

Base Salary Ranges

Please review the job posting for the location of this specific opportunity.

$145,000.00 - $247,000.00 for the location of: Maryland, Colorado, Washington and remote workers
$159,000.00 - $272,000.00 for the location of: Washington, D.C.
$181,000.00 - $309,000.00 for the location of: New York, California

Placement within the range provided above is based on the individual’s relevant experience and skills for the role.  Base salary is only one component of our total compensation package.  Employees may be eligible for a discretionary bonus, which is determined upon company and individual performance.

Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

At T. Rowe Price, our associates are our greatest asset. We thrive because our company culture is built on inclusion and because we sustain a work environment where associates can bring their best selves to work every day. The backgrounds, talents, and experiences of our global associates allow us to embrace new ideas and perspectives that move our business priorities forward and enable us to deliver strong client outcomes. Here, you can expect equal opportunity and fair and consistent treatment for all.

Benefits

T. Rowe Price is an equal opportunity employer and values diversity of thought, gender, and race. We believe our continued success depends upon the equal treatment of all associates and applicants for employment without discrimination on the basis of race, religion, creed, color, national origin, sex, gender, age, mental or physical disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, citizenship status, military or veteran status, pregnancy, or any other classification protected by country, federal, state, or local law.