Senior Machine Learning Engineer – Applied AI Research

As a Senior AI & Machine Learning Engineer in our Applied AI Research team, you will drive the technical direction for next-generation AI systems while owning the cloud infrastructure that powers them. This dual role spans the full stack—from architecting cost-efficient, high-performance cloud environments for AI workloads to designing and implementing Large Language Models (LLMs), agentic frameworks, and distilled Small Language Models (SLMs). You will lead the design of scalable infrastructure and intelligent systems alike, mentor the team, publish research findings, contribute to open source, and translate breakthrough AI capabilities into innovative production solutions. Position Responsibilities: Cloud Infrastructure & Platform Engineering AI Infrastructure Architecture: Design, build, and maintain cloud infrastructure (Azure must, AWS is a plus) purpose-built for AI/ML workloads, including GPU clusters, training pipelines, and model serving platforms. Cost Optimization: Continuously analyze and optimize cloud spend for AI workloads—implement cluster/instance strategies, right-size GPU allocations, manage reserved capacity, and establish FinOps practices to maximize performance per dollar. Performance Engineering: Tune infrastructure for throughput and latency across training and inference workloads, including networking, storage I/O, and GPU utilization monitoring. Platform Reliability: Ensure onboarding and optimizing for AI services through infrastructure-as-code (Terraform is plus , Pulumi), automated scaling, and robust monitoring/alerting pipelines. MLOps & CI/CD: Build and maintain end-to-end MLOps pipelines for model training, evaluation, registry, and deployment, enabling rapid and reproducible experimentation-to-production workflows. Security & Governance: Implement cloud security best practices for AI workloads, including data encryption, access controls, network isolation, and compliance with organizational policies for model and data governance. AI/ML Engineering Applied AI Leadership: Set the technical direction for the adoption of emerging AI capabilities, specifically focusing on LLMs, autonomous agents, and multi-modal systems. Model Engineering: Lead the end-to-end lifecycle of high-performance models, including fine-tuning, distillation of large models into efficient Small Language Models (SLMs), and quantization for deployment. Agentic Systems: Architect and build complex, reasoning-based AI agents using modern frameworks to solve open-ended business challenges. Innovation & Research: Experiment with state-of-the-art (SOTA) techniques, publish technical papers, and contribute to the open-source community to elevate the organization's technical brand. Mentorship: Mentor junior engineers and researchers on best practices in prompt engineering, model evaluation, distributed training, and cloud-native AI development. Productionization: Bridge the gap between research and production by converting experimental prototypes into scalable, reliable AI services running on optimized cloud infrastructure. Strategic Collaboration: Work with stakeholders to identify high-impact opportunities for disruptive AI, translating technical possibilities into strategic business outcomes. Required Qualifications: Significant hands-on experience with at least one major cloud platform (primarily Azure, AWS or GCP as plus), including compute, networking, storage, and IAM. Managing Databricks environment is a plus. Demonstrated experience managing GPU-accelerated cloud environments (and optimizing their cost and performance. Expert knowledge of modern AI frameworks and libraries (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face Transformers, LangChain, LlamaIndex). Proven experience in fine-tuning LLMs (e.g., LoRA, PEFT) and utilizing RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) architectures. Strong proficiency with infrastructure-as-code tools (Terraform, CloudFormation, or Pulumi) and container orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes). Ability to drive a strategic vision regarding AI infrastructure, GPU optimization, cost management, and model evaluation pipelines. Minimum Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Math, or Engineering; Masters or PhD preferred for this research-focused role. Preferred Qualifications: Deep technical understanding of Transformer architectures, attention mechanisms, and model distillation techniques. Experience building agentic workflows and using vector databases. Experience with Kubernetes-based ML platforms (Kubeflow, Ray, KServe/Triton Inference Server) for training and serving at scale. Familiarity with FinOps tooling and practices for cloud cost governance across AI workloads. Advanced knowledge in distributed computing and training large models across multi-GPU/node clusters. Track record of publishing papers in top-tier conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR) or significant contributions to open-source AI projects. Experience with observability stacks for AI infrastructure (Databricks, Grafana, cloud-native monitoring) and SLA-driven operational practices. 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 global team, we’ll support you in shaping the future you want to see. #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 hr@manulife.com. Referenced Salary Location Waterloo, Ontario Working Arrangement Hybrid Salary range is expected to be between $129,400.00 CAD - $179,400.00 CAD Employees 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 hr@manulife.com 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 hr@manulife.com for more information about U.S.-specific paid time off provisions. We're Manulife. And we’re on a mission to make decisions easier and lives better. Better is what drives us. It’s what inspires us to find new ways to support customers and colleagues in living longer and healthier lives. It’s the reason we’re dedicated to investing in digital innovation and accelerating a sustainable and economically inclusive future. Joining us means you’ll be empowered to learn and grow your career. We’ll recognize and support you in a flexible environment where well-being and inclusion are more than just words. And as part of our global team, you’ll help shape the future you want to see – and discover that better can take you anywhere you want to go. We’re proud of our accomplishments and recognitions. Recent awards include: 2024 Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award Winner Manulife Named one of Forbes World’s Best Employers 2023 Best Companies to Work for in Asia 2023 We’ve been recognized as one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers (2024) Manulife included in Bloomberg’s 2023 Gender-Equality Index To receive our latest job opportunities directly to your inbox, create an account or sign in and navigate to the ‘Job Alerts’ section located in the top right corner of the page. From there, you can sign up to receive job alerts. Our ambition is to be the most digital, customer-centric global company in our industry. Learn more at https://www.manulife.com/.