Associate Director, GenAI

Associate Director

The Associate Director leads a small team of software engineers responsible for designing and delivering the data pipelines, retrieval systems, and knowledge integrations that power a generative AI platform. This role combines technical leadership with people management — setting architectural direction, removing blockers, and ensuring the team delivers high-quality, scalable solutions. The Associate Director balances hands-on technical involvement with strategic planning, stakeholder communication, and team development.

• Directly manage team(s) focused on delivering high quality project results within one or more major technology disciplines: strategy, software development, operations, engineering, development services, information security, and compliance.
• Focus on team leadership, delivery of business value, risk mitigation, cost optimization and return on investment.
• Deliver results based upon FINRA annual goals, department goals and management requests.
• Direct and coordinate organization's financial and budget activities to fund operations, maximize investments, and increase efficiency for a project(s).
• Ensure technology best practices are being implemented and improved within team(s).
• Analyze information and evaluate results to choose the best solutions and solve problems.
• Support the evaluation of new technologies, techniques, and tools.
• Report status and issues to senior Technology management team.
• Work directly with outside vendors to negotiate services and product agreements
• Willingness to lead, take responsibility and offer options.
• Serve as a backup to more senior level management as needed.
• Develop constructive and cooperative working relationships with peers both within and outside of Technology, and maintain them over time.
• Establish and maintain external relationships with strategic product/service vendors and industry forums (government & private councils, standards bodies, product forums, etc.), as appropriate.
• Contribute to the establishment, evolution and continued compliance with standard practices and processes within the disciplines.
• Assist with adherence to technology policies and comply with all security controls.
• Ensure all work products meets/exceeds FINRA standards and risks are effectively managed.
• Participate in periodic Disaster Recovery (DR), Business Continuity Planning (BCP) and Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) testing and reporting.

• Identify and hire resource/skills needed within their organization.
• Responsible for staff performance management and training.
• Coordinate assignment of subordinate staff.
• Demonstration of FINRA's values.
• Collaboration, both in-person and virtually, in furtherance of FINRA's mission of investor protection and market integrity.

Technical Leadership & Architecture

· Set the technical vision and architectural direction for knowledge framework integrations, including data ingestion, embedding pipelines, and retrieval systems

· Make key design decisions on pipeline architecture, data modeling, and search strategies, balancing quality, performance, and delivery timelines

· Evaluate and recommend technologies, frameworks, and approaches for knowledge integration challenges

· Maintain sufficient hands-on involvement to provide credible technical guidance and unblock the team on complex problems

· Demonstrate solid understanding of systems and processes within the domain and recommend improvements

Team Leadership & People Management

· Manage, mentor, and develop a small team of software engineers, fostering a culture of ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement

· Conduct regular one-on-ones, provide constructive feedback, and support career growth for direct reports

· Plan and prioritize team workload, balancing feature delivery, technical debt, and operational responsibilities

· Recruit, onboard, and ramp new team members as the team scales

· Champion collaborative resolution of defects and lead internal process improvement initiatives

Engineering Excellence & Quality

· Establish and enforce engineering standards for code quality, testing, documentation, and peer review across the team

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