SVP, AI Engineering

About Pennymac

Pennymac (NYSE: PFSI) is a specialty financial services firm with a comprehensive mortgage platform and integrated business focused on the production and servicing of U.S. mortgage loans and the management of investments related to the U.S. mortgage market. Our people are the foundation of our success and at the heart of our dynamic work culture. Together, we work towards a unified goal of helping millions of Americans achieve aspirations of homeownership through the complete mortgage journey.

About the Role

The Senior Vice President of AI Engineering is responsible for planning, designing and executing all aspects of departmental disciplines and activities to support operational and strategic needs relating to the AI Engineering Team.

Responsibilities

• Contributes to the development of business unit goals and action plans to anticipate and support the needs of a growth-oriented company.
• Serves as a trusted advisor to Executive and Senior Leadership teams.
• Effectively translates business strategy into an integrated talent strategy for the enterprise.
• Ensures the development, implementation, and coordination of departmental plans and programs and the formulation and regulatory compliance of related policies and procedures.
• Responsible for overall system requirement creation, design and architecture.
• Oversees 3rd party vendors (enhancements, fixes, deployment, production support) to support optimization of resourced solutions.
• Oversees unit and regression testing, release coordination and production validation of AI development.
• Oversees stakeholder project reviews, audit remediation and SDLC process adherence.
• Develops and utilizes AI tools and processes to build a sustaining culture in support of a learning knowledge based organization with a continuous improvement process methodology.
• Provides strategic and operational leadership to the design, administration and implementation of all departmental programs, policies and processes.
• Provides leadership and guidance for direct reports and engenders a high-performance workforce culture through appropriate motivation.
• Ensures consistency of best practices, ethics, compliance with corporate and governmental standards and application of policies across all locations.
• Perform other related duties as required and assigned.
• Demonstrate behaviors which are aligned with the organization’s desired culture and values.
• Work in conjunction with Division leadership and internal customers to develop a departmental strategic plan.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or relevant field.
• 10+ years of relevant work experience.
• Proven ability to design and implement AI strategies that align with business objectives.
• Expertise in identifying AI driven opportunities for innovation, efficiency and growth.
• Expertise in leveraging Generative AI and LLMs for business innovation, customer engagement and operational efficiency.
• In-depth knowledge of AI technologies, including generative AI, machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing and computer vision.
• Familiarity with programming languages like Python, R and AI frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, open source resources such as HuggingFace and cloud based AI services for potential model tuning and deployment.
• Strong engineering skills (API, programming languages versatility, full stack background: Node.js, React, etc).
• Extensive experience in building LLM applications or RAG products.
• Extensive experience in Natural Language Processing (NLP) (help solve industry-scale problem).
• Experience in MLOps and DevOps principles and technologies (e.g. CI/CD, Containerization, Kubernetes, Cloud Infrastructure).
• In-depth knowledge of LangChain (development platform) and LangSmith (MLOps).
• In-depth knowledge of data retrieval management (vector databases, LlamaIndex, etc).
• Ability to connect AI initiatives with business goals, ensuring measurable ROI.
• Strong communication skills to collaborate effectively with stakeholders across business divisions, marketing, operations, finance and IT.
• Deeper understanding of the mortgage finance industry.
• Understanding of AI ethics, bias mitigation and data privacy regulations (such as GDPR, CCPA, etc.).
• Experience in establishing governance frameworks to ensure responsible and ethical AI development and deployment.
• Proven track record in building and leading AI teams, including engineers, analysts and possibly data scientists.
• Ability to mentor and upskill teams to stay at the forefront of AI advancements.
• Should be open to roll up the sleeves and perform engineering activities when needed.