The AI Engineer will join the Group Functions AI team, focusing on designing and shipping production-grade AI services that power Global Risk, Compliance, Legal, Procurement, and emerging GenAI solutions across the enterprise! The ideal candidate should be an advanced programmer with a strong grasp of Data Science, Data Engineering, Application Development, Software Engineering, and DevOps/LLMOps who has a mix of software craftsmanship, cloud-native engineering, and machine-learning know-how to turn data-science prototypes into reliable, business-critical products!
Position Responsibilities:
- Collaborate with Data Scientists and Data Engineers to build modular, reusable ML & GenAI pipelines (feature stores, model registries, automated retraining).
- Engineer and optimize models for performance, cost, and scalability; run A/B or challenger tests and track data/model drift.
- Own production deployment: containerize models (Docker), orchestrate with Kubernetes/AKS, and automate CI/CD with GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps.
- Stand up production observability for agentic services using OpenTelemetry-based tracing, metrics, and logs, enabling end-to-end visibility across model calls, tool calls, retrieval steps, latency, and errors.
- Build and maintain FastAPI-based and RESTful APIs, with production-grade practices (versioning, validation, auth, error handling, and performance).
- Design monitoring around agent run lifecycle concepts (threads/runs/steps), ensuring every agent execution can be replayed and diagnosed by walking the ordered sequence of operations and nested calls.
- Establish timely/config/workflow versioning and release process rigor: traceable changes, reproducible runs, and safe rollbacks for prompts, agent graphs, retrieval configs, and model settings.
- Guide solution architecture with Cloud & Security teams, network policies, secrets management.
- Implement and productionize GenAI patterns (prompt/context orchestration, RAG, guardrails) on Azure AI Foundry, Databricks, and internal LLMs.
- Champion engineering guidelines and mentor peers on clean code, test automation, and MLOps/LLMOps standards.
- Stay ahead of advances in ML, GenAI, and DevSecOps; introduce fit-for-purpose tools and frameworks to the team.
Required Qualifications:
- 5+ years delivering high-availability software in Python
- Proven experience operationalizing ML/GenAI models in cloud environments (Azure preferred) using Docker, Kubernetes/AKS, MLflow or Azure ML.
- Hands-on with CI/CD pipelines, unit/integration tests, code-quality scanning, and blue-green or canary releases.
- Experience operating LLM/agentic workloads: tracing agent runs (threads/steps/tool calls), debugging multi-step workflows, and controlling cost/latency at scale.
- Experience building and operating data-driven AI/ML applications using Azure Databricks for compute and orchestration, Azure Data Lake for scalable storage, and Cosmos DB for low-latency operational data and application state.
- Experience deploying and/or fine-tuning LLMs and working with vector databases (Azure AI Search, Pinecone).
- Experience with LLM observability and evaluation frameworks (e.g., LangSmith, Langfuse,…) to support production tracing, prompt/version tracking, and offline/online evaluation
- Demonstrated ability to balance urgency with delivering high-quality, well-documented solutions.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Science, Mathematics, or a related technical field, or equivalent experience in the industry.
- Master’s or PhD degree in a relevant field is an asset and may substitute for part of the required experience.
When you join our team:
- We’ll empower you to learn and grow the career you want.
- We’ll recognize and support you in a flexible environment where well-being and inclusion are more than just words.
- As part of our distributed Group Function AI team, you’ll shape the next generation of AI that drives Manulife’s global success.
#LI-Hybrid
About Manulife and John Hancock
Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping people make their decisions easier and lives better. To learn more about us, visit https://www.manulife.com/en/about/our-story.html.
Manulife is an Equal Opportunity Employer
At Manulife/John Hancock, we embrace our diversity. We strive to attract, develop and retain a workforce that is as diverse as the customers we serve and to foster an inclusive work environment that embraces the strength of cultures and individuals. We are committed to fair recruitment, retention, advancement and compensation, and we administer all of our practices and programs without discrimination on the basis of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion or religious beliefs, creed, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions), sexual orientation, genetic characteristics, veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, or any other ground protected by applicable law.
It is our priority to remove barriers to provide equal access to employment. A Human Resources representative will work with applicants who request a reasonable accommodation during the application process. All information shared during the accommodation request process will be stored and used in a manner that is consistent with applicable laws and Manulife/John Hancock policies. To request a reasonable accommodation in the application process, contact [email protected].
Referenced Salary Location
Toronto, OntarioWorking Arrangement
Salary range is expected to be between
$94,430.00 CAD - $144,430.00 CADEmployees also have the opportunity to participate in incentive programs and earn incentive compensation tied to business and individual performance. The actual salary will vary depending on local market conditions, geography and relevant job-related factors such as knowledge, skills, qualifications, experience, and education/training. If you are applying for this role outside of the primary location, please contact [email protected] for the salary range for your location.
Manulife offers eligible employees a wide array of customizable benefits, including health, dental, mental health, vision, short- and long-term disability, life and AD&D insurance coverage, adoption/surrogacy and wellness benefits, and employee/family assistance plans. We also offer eligible employees various retirement savings plans (including pension and a global share ownership plan with employer matching contributions) and financial education and counseling resources. Our generous paid time off program in Canada includes holidays, vacation, personal, and sick days, and we offer the full range of statutory leaves of absence. If you are applying for this role in the U.S., please contact [email protected] for more information about U.S.-specific paid time off provisions.
Top Skills
Manulife Toronto, Ontario, CAN Office
250 Bloor St E,, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M4W 1E6
Manulife Kitchener, Ontario, CAN Office
25 Water St S, Kitchener, ON, Canada, N2G 4Z4
Manulife Waterloo, Ontario, CAN Office
500 King St N,, Waterloo, ON, Canada, N2L
