Senior Manager - AI Engineering - Applied AI

FICO (NYSE: FICO) is a leading global analytics software company, helping businesses in 100+ countries make better decisions. Join our world-class team today and fulfill your career potential!

The Opportunity

"As an Engineering Manager on FICO’s Applied AI team, you will play a pivotal role in building AI-driven capabilities that power decision automation, fraud detection, and workflow optimization across our platform. You’ll lead a team of talented engineers while remaining hands-on with architecture and critical code paths. Your team designs and delivers AI-powered services, data pipelines, and runtime infrastructure that support high-stakes, production-grade use cases. You’ll collaborate closely with research, product, and design to turn ambitious ideas into scalable, reliable systems that address real-world business challenges. This role blends engineering leadership with active technical engagement, ideal for someone passionate about deploying AI to solve complex, real-world problems." - VP AI Engineering

What You’ll Contribute

• Lead a team of talented engineers by fostering aligned autonomy, offering technical guidance, and supporting performance and career development.

• Translate product and business requirements into technical roadmaps, sprint planning, and delivery schedules that align with FICO’s broader AI strategy.

• Drive the design and implementation of cutting-edge AI solutions, overseeing Agentic workflows (e.g., tool-using agents), RAG architectures, and custom fine-tuning and evaluation frameworks to ensure high performance and reliability.

• Ensure high-quality code and scalable architectures for LLM-based services and workflows; dive deep into code and contribute hands-on to key features and critical fixes.

• Implement systems for continuous AI app evaluation, A/B testing, backtesting, and drift detection to sustain high accuracy and relevance of deployed AI features over time.

• Work closely with UX designers to refine user experience, partner with product teams to prioritize features, and engage with other engineering leaders to align AI capabilities across the platform.

• Drive engineering best practices around testing, observability, documentation, and compliance, especially in AI governance and auditability.

• Own service reliability and operational excellence, ensuring systems meet agreed-upon SLOs and respond well to scale and production demands.

What We’re Seeking

• 10-15 years of industry experience in software, machine learning, or data engineering, with a proven track record of leading complex, large-scale projects and making strategic technical decisions.

• Solid experience in software engineering, with at least 2+ years in a people management or technical leadership role.

• Proven track record of delivering backend or data-intensive systems in production, preferably involving AI/ML.

• Hands-on experience with one or more of: Python, Go, Java, and familiarity with data infrastructure (e.g., Kafka, Spark, SQL/NoSQL, object stores).

• Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure and containerization (AWS, GCP, or Azure; Docker; Kubernetes).

• Experience collaborating with ML teams to productionize models or workflows (LLMs, RAG, evaluation pipelines is a plus).

• Comfortable working across the stack, from system architecture to API design to debugging complex production issues.

• Excellent communication and organizational skills, with the ability to align technical direction with product and business priorities.

• Passion for team building, continuous improvement, and fostering a positive, inclusive engineering culture.

• Strong ability to mentor and develop high-performing engineering teams, fostering collaboration across departments to deliver impactful solutions.

• Proven success in fast-paced, high-growth environments, with the agility to adapt and drive results in high-stakes settings.

• Demonstrated experience in applying Large Language Models (LLMs) to address real-world challenges effectively.

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, preferably with a specialization in Machine Learning or AI.

Our Offer to You

• An inclusive culture strongly reflecting our core values:  Act Like an Owner, Delight Our Customers and Earn the Respect of Others.

• The opportunity to make an impact and develop professionally by leveraging your unique strengths and participating in valuable learning experiences.

• Highly competitive compensation, benefits and rewards programs that encourage you to bring your best every day and be recognized for doing so.

• An engaging, people-first work environment offering work/life balance, employee resource groups, and social events to promote interaction and camaraderie.

• The targeted base pay range for this role is: $137,000 to $215,000 with this range reflecting differences in candidate knowledge, skills and experience.
   

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Why Make a Move to FICO?

At FICO, you can develop your career with a leading organization in one of the fastest-growing fields in technology today – Big Data analytics.  You’ll play a part in our commitment to help businesses use data to improve every choice they make, using advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, optimization, and much more.

FICO makes a real difference in the way businesses operate worldwide:

•    Credit Scoring — FICO® Scores are used by 90 of the top 100 US lenders.

•    Fraud Detection and Security — 4 billion payment cards globally are protected by FICO fraud systems.

•    Lending — 3/4 of US mortgages are approved using the FICO Score.

Global trends toward digital transformation have created tremendous demand for FICO’s solutions, placing us among the world’s top 100 software companies by revenue. We help many of the world’s largest banks, insurers, retailers, telecommunications providers and other firms reach a new level of success. Our success is dependent on really talented people – just like you – who thrive on the collaboration and innovation that’s nurtured by a diverse and inclusive environment. We’ll provide the support you need, while ensuring you have the freedom to develop your skills and grow your career.  Join FICO and help change the way business thinks!

Learn more about how you can fulfil your potential at www.fico.com/Careers

FICO promotes a culture of inclusion and seeks to attract a diverse set of candidates for each job opportunity. We are an equal employment opportunity employer and we’re proud to offer employment and advancement opportunities to all candidates without regard to race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, pregnancy, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. Research has shown that women and candidates from underrepresented communities may not apply for an opportunity if they don’t meet all stated qualifications. While our qualifications are clearly related to role success, each candidate’s profile is unique and strengths in certain skill and/or experience areas can be equally effective. If you believe you have many, but not necessarily all, of the stated qualifications we encourage you to apply.

Information submitted with your application is subject to the FICO Privacy policy at https://www.fico.com/en/privacy-policy