Drimva

Protective Life

AI/ML Engineering Lead

$124K–$180K

Birmingham, AL +2 · Hybrid · Full-time · Posted Sep 14, 2026

Location
Birmingham, AL
Nebraska - Virtual
Work From Home
Experience
8+ years in software, data, or ML engineering, including several years building and operating production ML systems.
Education
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Engineering, or a related field — or equivalent practical experience.

About the job

Leads hands-on development and governed production deployment of machine learning and generative AI systems on Protective Life’s Azure Databricks Lakehouse.

What you'll do

  • Lead ML and GenAI systems from problem framing and data sourcing through deployment, monitoring, and retraining; set ML lifecycle engineering standards.
  • Build MLOps and GenAI capabilities, including model serving, RAG, evaluation, guardrails, and CI/CD; monitor model performance, cost, and drift.
  • Mentor engineers and partner with product, Model Risk, governance, legal, and security teams on reliable, documented, fair, and compliant models.

What they ask for

  • 8+ years in software, data, or ML engineering, including several years building and operating production ML systems.
  • Technical leadership experience, including mentoring engineers, setting standards, and leading non-trivial system design.
  • Strong Python and SQL; end-to-end ML lifecycle experience and common ML frameworks.
  • Experience delivering GenAI/LLM applications, modern data stack and Databricks lakehouse, Azure DevOps CI/CD, and Microsoft Azure.

Nice to have

  • Financial services or insurance ML experience and familiarity with model risk management.
  • Familiarity with Databricks Mosaic AI, Feature Store / Unity Catalog features, Vector Search, or Azure Machine Learning.

Pay

USD 124,500–180,000 per-year-salary (base salary)

Tools

Python, SQL, MLflow, Azure Databricks, dlt (dltHub), dbt, Dagster, Azure DevOps (ADO)

AI focus

Build and operate production ML and GenAI/LLM systems, including RAG, embeddings, vector search, evaluation, guardrails, monitoring, and responsible-AI governance.

Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative

First seen Oct 29, 2026 · Last verified Nov 5, 2026 (UTC)