Dir Software Engineering - AI Assisted Services

Director of Engineering for Assisted Services

Four days in the office from any of our locations in RI, or Phoenix AZ. Role is not relocation eligible.

The Director of Engineering for Assisted Services will lead the engineering strategy, architecture, and delivery of platforms that power human-assisted customer interactions across the bank—including contact center tooling, advisor/agent workflows, servicing orchestration, customer communication flows, and intelligent automation. This leader will unify fragmented servicing platforms, modernize legacy components, and accelerate our transition to an event-driven, API-first, and increasingly AI-assisted servicing ecosystem. The Director will oversee engineering teams building next-generation capabilities such as AI-guided agent experiences, intelligent case routing, natural-language search, automated summarization, and contextual recommendations—all designed to elevate both the colleague and customer experience. The role requires deep engineering leadership, strong architectural discipline, operational excellence, and hands-on experience designing or integrating AI-powered applications into complex servicing environments.

Key Responsibilities

Leadership & Strategy

• Lead, inspire, and develop high-performing engineering teams, fostering a culture of innovation, ownership, and engineering excellence.
• Define the technical strategy for Assisted Services across servicing platforms, omni-channel agent tools, workflow engines, and customer interaction systems.
• Drive the adoption of AI-assisted servicing capabilities, including conversational AI, machine learning–based recommendations, agent assist tooling, and automated knowledge retrieval.
• Shape and implement an architectural vision that unifies assisted and self-service experiences into a cohesive, modern servicing ecosystem.
• Partner with Product, Operations, Risk, Enterprise Architecture, and Data Science to ensure AI solutions are aligned with customer needs, responsible-AI standards, and regulatory requirements.

Delivery & Execution

• Oversee delivery of core servicing capabilities including call center tooling, unified agent desktops, case management, workflow automation, and system integrations.
• Lead engineering efforts to build and deploy AI-driven enhancements such as:
• Real-time agent assist (summaries, recommendations, prompts)
• Predictive servicing and intelligent routing
• Contextual data retrieval and knowledge search
• NLP-powered insights to shorten handle times and improve accuracy
• Ensure teams have clear requirements, technical specifications, and a strong delivery operating model to meet timelines and quality expectations.
• Implement robust engineering processes, tooling, and CI/CD pipelines that support rapid iteration and frequent releases.

Platform Reliability, Compliance & Security

• Embed secure-by-design, privacy, and responsible-AI practices across all servicing applications.
• Ensure AI models and features adhere to ethical, compliance, and regulatory guidelines—including transparency, explainability, and model-risk controls.
• Strengthen platform reliability and performance through observability tooling, automated quality checks, and proactive monitoring.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Collaborate with Data Science and AI teams to operationalize models into production systems, including inference pipelines, model monitoring, and lifecycle management.
• Partner with Operations to understand agent workflows, reduce friction, and identify where AI can drive meaningful improvements in efficiency and consistency.
• Engage with Fraud, Identity, Security, and Compliance teams to ensure AI-assisted solutions uphold trust and customer protection.

Required Qualifications

Twelve or more years of hands-on software engineering experience building large-scale, customer-facing systems. Ten or more years leading engineering teams in complex, multi-platform environments. Proven experience delivering or integrating AI-powered applications, such as agent-assist tools, conversational AI, ML-driven analytics, or intelligent process automation. Expertise in modern engineering practices, including Agile/Scrum, DevOps, CI/CD, release management, and API-led development. Strong proficiency in multiple languages (e.g., Java, Python, JavaScript/React, Go, C#) and experience with cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP). Deep knowledge of distributed systems, event-driven design, and high-availability architectures. Excellent communication skills, capable of influencing senior stakeholders across business and technology.

Desired Qualifications

Experience in financial services, especially in servicing platforms, contact centers, CRM, case management, identity, or authentication. Background deploying or scaling AI/ML solutions (NLP, classification models, vector search, LLM-based applications). Familiarity with responsible-AI frameworks, model governance, and regulatory considerations in a financial services context. Ability to navigate complex organizational structures and drive alignment across multiple senior leaders.

Education

Required: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or similar technical discipline. Preferred: Master's degree in Software Engineering, Computer Science, AI/ML, or related field.

Pay Transparency

The salary range for this position is $218,200 - $327,300 per year plus an opportunity to earn an annual discretionary bonus. Actual pay is based on various factors including but not limited to the work location, and relevant skills and experience. We offer competitive pay, comprehensive medical, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, maternity/paternity leave, flexible work arrangements, education reimbursement, wellness programs and more. Note, Citizens' paid time off policy exceeds the mandatory, paid sick or paid time-away policy of very local and state jurisdiction in the United States. For an overview of our benefits, visit https://jobs.citizensbank.com/benefits.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Citizens, its parent, subsidiaries, and related companies (Citizens) provide equal employment and advancement opportunities to all colleagues and applicants for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, citizenship, physical or mental disability, perceived disability or history or record of a disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity or expression, genetic information, genetic characteristic, marital or domestic partner status, victim of domestic violence, family status/parenthood, medical condition, military or veteran status, national origin, pregnancy/childbirth/lactation, colleague's or a dependent's reproductive health decision making, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or any other category protected by federal, state and/or local laws. At Citizens, we are committed to fostering an inclusive culture that enables all colleagues to bring their best selves to work every day and everyone is expected to be treated with respect and professionalism. Employment decisions are based solely on merit, qualifications, performance and capability.

Why Work for Us

At Citizens, you'll find a customer-centric culture built around helping our customers and giving back to our local communities. When you join our team, you are part of a supportive and collaborative workforce, with access to training and tools to accelerate your potential and maximize your career growth.

Background Check

Any offer of employment is conditioned upon the candidate successfully passing a background check, which may include initial credit, motor vehicle record, public record, prior employment verification, and criminal background checks. Results of the background check are individually reviewed based upon legal requirements imposed by our regulators and with consideration of the nature and gravity of the background history and the job offered. Any offer of employment will include further information.