The Lead Solutions Architect, AI Platform is a hands-on technical leader who designs and builds the architecture behind our AI platform for front office investment teams across Public Markets globally. Our AI program has scaled from zero to roughly 70% adoption in under a year, and the next phase is platform: governed APIs, agentic workflows, and an access and audit model that lets portfolio managers and analysts put agents to work on real research and portfolio tasks without loosening a single entitlement.

This is the hard problem in front office AI, and it is the center of this role. Investment data is entitlement-bound — licensed market data, restricted lists, information barriers, deal-team access. An agent acting for an analyst has to inherit exactly that analyst’s access, and every action it takes has to be reconstructible afterward: who asked, what the agent retrieved, what it produced, and who ratified it. We are building a platform where AI is never the decider of record, and where that property is enforced by architecture rather than by policy.

Position Responsibilities:

• Serve as the front-deployed architecture lead, setting technical standards and architectural direction.
• Develop reference implementations and deliver production-ready code alongside engineering teams.
• Create design documents and Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) to clearly document key architectural decisions.
• Evaluate and select technologies, validating decisions through hands-on implementation.
• Provide technical leadership and final architectural direction when teams have differing approaches.
• Own the effectiveness of architectural designs in production, ensuring solutions are practical, scalable, and executable.
• Establish architectural patterns and standards that guide the work of Full Stack and AI Engineers.
• Partner closely with engineering teams to ensure solutions are built consistently with the established architecture.
• Drive architectural decisions from design through production implementation, with accountability for successful outcomes.

Required Qualifications:

• 8+ years in software architecture, platform engineering, or senior full-stack engineering, including ownership of systems in production.
• Demonstrated experience architecting and shipping LLM-backed applications in production — RAG, agents, or streaming assistants — rather than prototypes.
• Deep expertise in at least one of Python or TypeScript/Node.js, with working fluency in the other.
• Production cloud experience on Azure or AWS, with demonstrated ability to go deep on Azure (AKS, Entra ID, Key Vault, Blob Storage, Azure DevOps/GitHub Actions).
• Containerization and Infrastructure as Code: Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform/Bicep/Pulumi.
• Proven experience designing authentication and authorization systems: SSO, MFA, RBAC or fine-grained/relationship-based authorization, delegated and on-behalf-of access, API key and secrets management.
• Experience building audit and access controls that satisfy external reviewers — auditors, risk, or compliance — not just internal engineering standards.
• Track record establishing engineering standards across multiple teams — ADRs, CI enforcement, code review norms, and shared tooling.
• Experience designing API abstraction layers and data contracts consumed by other teams.
• Strong written communication — you write design documents, ADRs, and standards that others follow.
• Comfortable operating as the technical authority without formal management responsibility.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with vector search (MongoDB Atlas Vector Search or equivalent) and retrieval quality evaluation.
• Experience with MCP or comparable agent tool-interface standards.
• Real-time and collaborative systems: WebSockets, CRDTs, event-driven architecture.
• Ownership of a design system or shared component library at scale.
• Platform consolidation experience: migrating disparate application stacks onto a unified platform.
• Financial services compliance: SOC 2, regulatory audit trails, model governance.
• Experience with entitlement systems, information barriers, or licensed data access constraints.
• Investment management, asset management, or capital markets technology, including familiarity with positions, portfolios, securities master, and market data.
• Databricks or Spark exposure.
• Experience mentoring engineers and setting team culture and process norms.

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

The role being advertised is an existing vacancy.

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

Salary range is expected to be between

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 [email protected] for the salary range for your location.

Manulife/John Hancock 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/401(k) savings plans and a global share ownership plan with employer matching contributions) and financial education and counseling resources. Our generous paid time off program in the U.S. includes up to 11 paid holidays, 3 personal days, 150 hours of vacation, and 40 hours of sick time (or more where required by law) each year, and we offer the full range of statutory leaves of absence.

We use data and analytics technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and automated processing tools, to analyze and process the information you provide to us or third parties in the application process. For more information, please refer to our personal information collection statement.

Know Your Rights I Family & Medical Leave I Employee Polygraph Protection I Right to Work I E-Verify