Note The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Thrivent is seeking an experienced AI Engineering Manager to lead the team responsible for building their enterprise AI/ML platform. This role involves guiding the development of scalable and efficient AI solutions while fostering a strong engineering culture and ensuring alignment with business goals. Responsibilities Review AI/ML and platform solution designs — classical ML, LLM/RAG, and agentic systems — and provide guidance on scalability, security, cost, and compliance across Databricks and AWS Shape reference architectures and reusable, paved-road patterns (training pipelines, deployment templates, retrieval services, repository bootstrapping) that make the right way the easy way for delivery teams Maintain strong technical fluency in AI/ML systems; able to read code and guide best practices across model integration, APIs, and platform services Apply strong problem-solving and analytical skills to guide teams through complex AI/ML and platform challenges Partner closely with Product Management to define strategies, operating plans, roadmaps, targets, and measures for the platform capabilities the team owns Treat the platform as a product understand the needs of Thrivent’s delivery teams, drive adoption through enablement, documentation, and support, and measure success by customer outcomes Help set the product and platform technology vision in partnership with AI engineering leadership; represent the business value of platform investments and influence prioritization in the roadmap Support the team’s agile practices; engage in sprint demos and understand both the outcomes sought and the technology delivered Build strong working relationships with peers across teams; proactively identify cross-team challenges and empower teams to solve them collaboratively Champion engineering excellence across AI/ML and platform development, including code review, testing, CI/CD, MLOps, observability, and reliability practices Build evaluation and observability into the platform as first-class capabilities for LLM and agentic systems, including automated evaluation, drift monitoring, and tracing Partner with model risk, security, and compliance functions to automate governance risk-tier classification, policy-gated promotion, and audit-ready evidence Own the operational health of the team’s services monitoring and alerting, serving as an escalation point for production incidents, and prioritizing work to maintain and continuously improve product health Stay ahead of trends in AI/ML, platform engineering, and cloud (AWS), assess their impact on business capabilities and strategy, and create space for teams to experiment with and adopt emerging techniques Guide build-versus-buy decisions and tool selection for the team’s capability areas; define selection criteria with the team and manage associated technology vendor and consulting relationships Hold regular 11s and team meetings; provide constructive feedback, guidance, and coaching to help engineers grow their skills and experience Provide career planning advice and create development plans that leverage engineers’ skills and capabilities and provide learning opportunities Recruit, develop, and sustain a high-performing team while promoting a culture of shared accountability, operational excellence, and partnership across the organization; plan ahead for future people needs, including selecting and engaging consulting partners Create a positive team environment where individuals have psychological safety and work collaboratively while understanding, respecting, challenging, and appreciating each other’s ideas Model Thrivent’s leadership competencies of courage, collaboration, and commitment, while supporting a culture that represents the Thrivent purpose, promise, and values, ensuring Thrivent’s trust and reputation remain strong with its clients Manage a team of direct and indirect staff Skills Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or other technical field or equivalent work experience 8+ years of progressively responsible positions in Information Technology including 5+ years' experience in IT discipline, e.g., customer relationship management, portfolio strategy and roadmap development 3+ years of leadership experience in all aspects of a specific IT discipline, e.g. IT/LOB customer relationship management, portfolio strategy and/or demand management 3+ years' management/supervisory experience in specific IT functional area discipline, e.g. applications development or equivalent skills leading major technical projects with accountability for enforcing talent management needs and performance standards Demonstrated leadership and experience managing multidiscipline, high-performance work teams Strong competency in project management and execution of multiple or large projects Experience working with customers to develop solutions to complex business problems Proven ability to communicate effectively with internal/external stakeholders to support business initiatives Proven ability to function in an environment which requires flexibility, good judgment, and intelligent decision making, often based on limited information and/or extreme conditions Ability to formulate, implement and evaluate plans, programs and procedures applicable to customer relationships and demand management Hands-on experience building or operating production ML or LLM systems, with working fluency in modern AI patterns — RAG, agentic systems, and model lifecycle/MLOps — sufficient to credibly review designs and code Experience with the platform's core stack Databricks (including MLflow and Unity Catalog) and AWS (including Amazon Bedrock and SageMaker), along with modern CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code tooling Experience leading internal platform, ML platform, or developer-experience teams, including platform-as-a-product practices and adoption/outcome metrics Familiarity with evaluation and observability for LLM and agentic systems (automated evaluation, hallucination detection, drift monitoring, tracing) Familiarity with agentic AI patterns such as Model Context Protocol (MCP), multi-agent orchestration, and human-in-the-loop design Experience with AI governance, model risk management, or responsible AI practices in financial services or another regulated industry Financial Services industry experience Benefits Various bonuses (including, for example, annual or long-term incentives) Medical, dental, and vision insurance Health savings account Flexible spending account 401k Pension Life and accidental death and dismemberment insurance Disability insurance Supplemental protection insurance 20 days of Paid Time Off each year Sick and Safe Time 10 paid company holidays Volunteer Time Off Paid parental leave EAP Well-being benefits Other employee benefits Company Overview Thrivent is a financial services organization that helps Christians be wise with money and live generously. It was founded in 1902, and is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, with a workforce of 5001-10000 employees. Its website is https//www.thrivent.com. Company H1B Sponsorship Thrivent has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships, with 1 in 2026, 10 in 2025, 9 in 2024, 15 in 2023, 6 in 2022, 2 in 2021, 2 in 2020. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role.