VP, Principal AI Engineer

Acadian Asset Management is a global systematic investment manager at the forefront of data-driven investing since 1986. Headquartered in Boston with locations in Singapore London and Sydney we manage over $170 billion on behalf of leading institutions worldwideincluding pension funds endowments foundations and sovereign wealth funds. We harness advanced technology rich datasets and multidisciplinary expertise to help clients navigate complex markets and uncover insights that may be overlooked by traditional approaches.

What sets Acadian apart is our people. We foster a collaborative intellectually curious environment where ideas are tested diverse perspectives are welcomed and innovation thrives. Were united by a shared purpose: delivering effective client outcomes and supporting one another in work thats both challenging and rewarding. We offer a flexible hybrid work environment strong benefits and a casual but focused office cultureall designed to support the meaningful collaborative work that defines Acadian.

Acadian Asset Management is a global systematic investment manager at the forefront of data-driven investing since 1986. Headquartered in Boston with locations in Singapore London and Sydney we manage over $170 billion on behalf of leading institutions worldwideincluding pension funds endowments foundations and sovereign wealth funds. We harness advanced technology rich datasets and multidisciplinary expertise to help clients navigate complex markets and uncover insights that may be overlooked by traditional approaches.

What sets Acadian apart is our people. We foster a collaborative intellectually curious environment where ideas are tested diverse perspectives are welcomed and innovation thrives. Were united by a shared purpose: delivering effective client outcomes and supporting one another in work thats both challenging and rewarding. We offer a flexible hybrid work environment strong benefits and a casual but focused office cultureall designed to support the meaningful collaborative work that defines Acadian.

Position Overview:

The Principal AI Engineer is a senior technical leader responsible for defining designing and delivering enterprise-grade AI platforms and solutions across the firm. This role owns the firms AI architecture end-to-end spanning agentic systems retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) model integration evaluation security and operationalization.

Operating as a hands-on architect the Principal AI Engineer partners closely with investment teams and leaders across engineering data security risk and the broader firm. This role aligns diverse requirements and perspectives into coherent scalable and governable AI solutions. The Principal AI Engineer sets technical standards drives architectural consistency and owns the firm-wide AI modernization and adoption roadmap ensuring AI capabilities mature from experimentation to durable production-grade systems.

Acadian supports a hybrid work environment; employees are on-site in the Boston office 3 days a week.

What Youll Do:

• Own and evolve the firms AI architecture across agentic systems retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) model integration and production deployment.
• Partner closely with investment engineering data risk security and business teams to align diverse requirements into scalable and governable AI solutions.
• Define and maintain technical standards architectural patterns and best practices for enterprise AI.
• Lead the design and delivery of production-grade AI systems working alongside teams rather than centralizing all development.
• Enable and accelerate AI development within investment and research teams while ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture controls and platforms.
• Make and communicate architectural tradeoffs balancing innovation risk cost time-to-value and team autonomy.
• Ensure AI solutions integrate cleanly with existing platforms data sources and workflows across the firm.
• Embed governance security and risk controls into AI systems in collaboration with Risk Compliance and Security.
• Establish approaches for model evaluation monitoring and lifecycle management appropriate for a regulated environment.
• Continuously reassess and evolve AI architecture in response to new capabilities risks and firm priorities.
• Influence and help shape shared AI platforms tooling and reusable components.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies frameworks and vendors with a practical risk-aware lens.
• Drive adoption by ensuring AI solutions deliver measurable value to teams.
• Serve as a senior technical mentor leading through technical credibility collaboration and influence rather than formal authority.

Were Looking for Teammates With:

• Bachelors degree in computer science engineering mathematics or a related technical field or equivalent practical experience.
• Advanced degree or formal training in AI machine learning data science or a related field is a plus but not required.
• Significant experience in senior or principal-level software engineering roles with demonstrated ownership of complex production systems.
• Proven experience designing building and operating enterprise-grade AI or machine learning systems beyond prototypes and proofs of concept.
• Deep understanding of modern AI architectures including agentic systems retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) MCP and large language model integration.
• Ability to reason clearly about tradeoffs involving risk cost scalability and time-to-value and to communicate those decisions effectively to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals including API design distributed systems and cloud-native architectures.
• Experience operationalizing AI systems including testing monitoring evaluation and lifecycle management.
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively across highly skilled opinionated teams synthesizing diverse perspectives into aligned technical outcomes.
• Demonstrated ability to lead through influence collaboration and technical credibility rather than formal authority.
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms and modern AI tooling ecosystems. Amazon Bedrock and Sagemaker experience is preferred.
• Experience partnering with Risk Compliance Security or Legal teams to embed controls into technical systems.
• Familiarity with quantitative research-driven or investment-oriented AI use cases.
• Experience working in regulated or highly risk-aware environments such as financial services or asset management.

The base salary range for this role is $225000 $275000per year. Actual compensation will be determined based on a candidates skills qualifications and relevant addition to base pay this position may be eligible for discretionary incentive compensationand includes participation in Acadians comprehensive benefits program which includes health retirement and wellness offerings.

To apply for this position or view Acadians open roles please visit the Careers section of our website at: We will contact only selected candidates. If you are a candidate with a disability or are assisting a candidate with a disability and require an accommodation to apply for one of our jobs please email us at

Acadian Asset Management LLC is committed to providing equal employment opportunity to all employees and applicants. No employee or applicant shall be discriminated against on the basis of gender race creed color sex age national origin marital status pregnancy or parenthood veteran status citizenship status disability gender identity or sexual orientation.