VP, AI/ML & Agentic Engineering

Date: Apr 14, 2026

Primary Location: Radnor, PA, US

Company: Lincoln Financial

Alternate Locations: Radnor, PA (Pennsylvania); Charlotte, NC (North Carolina); Fort Wayne, IN (Indiana); Greensboro, NC (North Carolina)

Work Arrangement:

Hybrid : Employee will work 3 days a week in a Lincoln office

Relocation assistance: is not available for this opportunity.

Requisition #: 75972

The Role at a Glance

Lincoln Financial is accelerating its enterprise AI transformation. As VP, AI/ML & Agentic Engineering, you will be the senior technical leader responsible for building and scaling Lincoln’s AI/ML platforms, MLOps capabilities, generative AI infrastructure, and agentic AI systems that bring AI products from concept to production at enterprise scale.

This role leads the engineering execution that powers AI across underwriting, claims, customer service, and back office operations. You will report to the Chief Data & AI Engineering Officer and work in close daily partnership with:

• AI Product & Delivery (use cases and product strategy)
• Data Platform & Engineering (data infrastructure and feature stores)
• Data Strategy & Governance (data quality, standards, and responsible AI controls)

This is a hands on, high impact leadership role for a builder who thrives in translating advanced AI capabilities into measurable business outcomes.

What you'll be doing

AI/ML Platform Architecture & Strategy

• Own the end to end architecture of Lincoln’s AI/ML platform, spanning feature consumption, model training, model serving, and MLOps pipelines
• Define multi year AI technology roadmaps and lead build vs buy decisions
• Manage strategic AI and cloud vendors across foundation models and ML platforms
• Establish enterprise MLOps standards including model versioning, monitoring, A/B testing, retraining, and automated deployment
• Partner with the CIO organization to ensure security, governance, and enterprise integration

MLOps & Production AI Systems

• Build and operate CI/CD pipelines for ML, including experiment tracking, model registries, deployment automation, and rollback mechanisms
• Own the deployment and operation of ML and GenAI models across core business functions
• Deliver real time AI services with 99.9%+ uptime and sub 100ms latency for customer facing applications
• Implement end to end observability across model performance, data drift, latency, and system health
• Scale the platform to support 50+ production models serving millions of predictions daily

GenAI & Agentic AI Infrastructure

• Design and operate LLM deployment infrastructure for fine tuning, inference, and orchestration
• Build Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) systems using vector databases and document intelligence pipelines
• Create frameworks for agentic and multi agent systems that automate complex business workflows
• Implement prompt engineering standards, cost management, quality monitoring, and safety controls
• Enable priority use cases such as Intelligent Document Processing, underwriting augmentation, claims automation, agent copilots, and customer self service AI

AI Solution Delivery & Product Partnership

• Translate AI product priorities into scalable technical solutions in partnership with AI Product leaders
• Drive a rapid experimentation and MVP first delivery culture for AI solutions
• Personally guide architecture for the highest impact AI initiatives
• Establish repeatable delivery patterns that compress time from idea to production
• Embed a strong focus on business value, learning from production, and continuous iteration

Technical Excellence, Governance & Safe AI

• Implement comprehensive model governance, validation, documentation, and auditability
• Establish model risk management capabilities, including kill switches and rollback strategies
• Partner with InfoSec, Legal, and Compliance to meet financial services regulatory standards
• Define reference architectures and development patterns for batch, real time, and streaming ML
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies and drive adoption where they deliver competitive advantage

What Success Looks Like

• Enterprise AI platform established: AI/ML, GenAI, and agentic infrastructure live with multiple production models, robust MLOps pipelines, and governance embedded from day one.
• Scalable delivery engine: Self service AI platform enabling rapid deployment, high uptime, low latency inference, and significantly reduced time from experimentation to production.
• Production grade AI at scale: Dozens of ML and GenAI models in production powering core business processes across underwriting, claims, and customer engagement.
• Sustained business impact: A high performing AI engineering organization delivering transformational use cases and positioning AI as a competitive advantage for Lincoln

What we’re looking for

Must Haves

• 12+ years of AI/ML, software, or platform engineering experience with 5+ years in senior leadership roles
• Proven success building and scaling AI engineering teams and enterprise AI platforms
• Deep, hands on expertise with Databricks and/or Snowflake and a major cloud provider (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
• Extensive production ML experience across the full lifecycle, including MLOps, monitoring, and retraining
• Hands on GenAI experience with LLMs, RAG, agentic AI systems, and prompt engineering
• Experience delivering real time AI systems with low latency and high throughput
• Background in highly regulated industries with strong model risk and compliance discipline
• Bachelor’s degree required; Master’s or PhD strongly preferred

Nice to Haves

• Insurance or financial services AI use cases
• Agentic and multi agent systems
• Multi cloud AI architectures
• Vector databases and semantic search platforms
• Kubernetes, containers, and infrastructure as code

Application Deadline

Applications for this position will be accepted through May 22nd, subject to earlier closure due to applicant volume.

What’s it like to work here?

At Lincoln Financial, we love what we do. We make meaningful contributions each and every day to empower our customers to take charge of their lives. Working alongside dedicated and talented colleagues, we build fulfilling careers and stronger communities through a company that values our unique perspectives, insights and contributions and invests in programs that empower each of us to take charge of our own future.

What’s in it for you:

• Clearly defined career tracks and job levels, along with associated behaviors for each of Lincoln's core values and leadership attributes

• Leadership development and virtual training opportunities

• PTO/parental leave

• Competitive 401K and employee benefits

• Free financial counseling, health coaching and employee assistance program

• Tuition assistance program

• Work arrangements that work for you

• Effective productivity/technology tools and training

The pay range for this position is $157,000 - $285,600 with anticipated pay for new hires between the minimum and midpoint of the range and could vary above and below the listed range as permitted by applicable law. Pay is based on non-discriminatory factors including but not limited to work experience, education, location, licensure requirements, proficiency and qualifications required for the role. The base pay is just one component of Lincoln’s total rewards package for employees. In addition, the role may be eligible for the Annual Incentive Program, which is discretionary and based on the performance of the company, business unit and individual. Other rewards may include long-term incentives, sales incentives and Lincoln’s standard benefits package.

About The Company

Lincoln Financial (NYSE: LNC) helps people to confidently plan for their version of a successful future. We focus on identifying a clear path to financial security, with products including annuities, life insurance, group protection, and retirement plan services.

With our 120-year track record of expertise and integrity, millions of customers trust our solutions and service to help put their goals in reach.

Lincoln Financial Distributors, a broker-dealer, is the wholesale distribution organization of Lincoln Financial. Lincoln Financial is the marketing name for Lincoln Financial Corporation and its affiliates including The Lincoln National Life Insurance Company, Fort Wayne, IN, and Lincoln Life & Annuity Company of New York, Syracuse, NY. Lincoln Financial affiliates, their distributors, and their respective employees, representatives and/or insurance agents do not provide tax, accounting or legal advice.

Lincoln is committed to creating an inclusive environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.

Follow us on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. For the latest company news, visit our newsroom.

Be Aware of Fraudulent Recruiting Activities

If you are interested in a career at Lincoln, we encourage you to review our current openings and apply on our website. Lincoln values the privacy and security of every applicant and urges all applicants to diligently protect their sensitive personal information from scams targeting job seekers. These scams can take many forms including fake employment applications, bogus interviews and falsified offer letters.

Lincoln will not ask applicants to provide their social security numbers, date of birth, bank account information or other sensitive information in job applications. Additionally, our recruiters do not communicate with applicants through free e-mail accounts (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail) or conduct interviews utilizing video chat rooms. We will never ask applicants to provide payment during the hiring process or extend an offer without conducting a phone, live video or in-person interview. Please contact Lincoln's fraud team at [email protected] if you encounter a recruiter or see a job opportunity that seems suspicious.

Additional Information

This position may be subject to Lincoln’s Political Contribution Policy. An offer of employment may be contingent upon disclosing to Lincoln the details of certain political contributions. Lincoln may decline to extend an offer or terminate employment for this role if it determines political contributions made could have an adverse impact on Lincoln’s current or future business interests, misrepresentations were made, or for failure to fully disclose applicable political contributions and or fundraising activities.

Any unsolicited resumes or candidate profiles submitted through our web site or to personal e-mail accounts of employees of Lincoln Financial are considered property of Lincoln Financial and are not subject to payment of agency fees.

Lincoln Financial ("Lincoln" or "the Company") is an Equal Opportunity employer and, as such, is committed in policy and practice to recruit, hire, compensate, train and promote, in all job classifications, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin or disability. Opportunities throughout Lincoln are available to employees and applicants are evaluated on the basis of job qualifications. If you are a person with a disability that impedes your ability to express your interest for a position through our online application process, or require TTY/TDD assistance, contact us by calling 260-455-2558.