Location Designation: Hybrid - 3 days per week
Role OverviewNew York Life is seeking an accomplished Solution Architect & Distinguished Engineer to provide senior, hands-on technical leadership across Field Experience. You will shape the architecture of intelligent, connected, and composable experiences that help our field professionals serve clients, grow their practices, and operate effectively.
This role combines modern application architecture, cloud, data, APIs, events, Generative AI, and agentic AI. You will set cross-domain technical direction, create reusable patterns and reference architectures, build prototypes and reference implementations, and solve complex challenges that span products, platforms, data domains, and engineering teams.
A major area of impact will be helping New York Life reimagine Field experience, productivity and planning in the new world - moving beyond the digitization of today's processes to rethink how discovery, planning intelligence, recommendations, specialist expertise, advisor workflows, trusted data, NYL360, Generative AI, and governed agentic capabilities can work together.
As a member of the Field Experience Forward Leading team, you will help shape the future of the organization by identifying emerging technologies, defining transformational architecture strategies, and turning innovative ideas into scalable solutions. You will operate at the intersection of business strategy, modern engineering, AI, and advisor experience to help New York Life lead in a rapidly evolving industry.
This is a senior individual-contributor position. You will lead through technical authority, hands-on expertise, influence, innovation, and mentorship rather than direct people-management responsibility.
What You'll DoShape Architecture Across Field Experience- Define and evolve cross-domain architecture direction aligned with Field Experience priorities and enterprise technology standards.
- Create target-state architectures and modernization strategies spanning applications, cloud, data, integration, AI, and digital experiences.
- Identify opportunities to simplify fragmented experiences, reduce duplication, and establish reusable capabilities across business domains.
- Guide build, buy, reuse, integration, and modernization decisions through clear principles, evidence, and pragmatic trade-off analysis.
- Partner with Product, Engineering, Enterprise Architecture, Data & AI, Experience Design, Cybersecurity, Risk, and business stakeholders to translate strategy into scalable technical capabilities.
Build Modern, Composable Experiences- Create reusable patterns for APIs, services, events, data products, composable user experiences, shared context, and embedded intelligence.
- Define how Field Experience capabilities integrate with NYL360 and other enterprise experiences while preserving clear ownership of domain logic, authoritative data, and outcomes.
- Promote architectures that allow capabilities to evolve independently while contributing to coherent advisor, field leader, and client journeys.
- Guide cloud modernization, interoperability, resilience, security, observability, and DevSecOps practices across strategic initiatives.
- Help teams modernize complex technology landscapes while preserving authoritative systems, calculations, controls, and specialist capabilities where appropriate.
Reimagine Field Experience, Productivity & Planning in the New WorldProvide deep architecture leadership for Planning Solutions and Protection-Powered Growth as an important area of impact within the broader Field Experience mandate. Help rethink the end-to-end planning environment across:
- Client and household discovery, data gathering, and trusted context.
- Planning assessments, analysis, stress testing, scenario modeling, and calculation engines.
- Solution design, recommendation support, storytelling, education, and client presentations.
- Advanced-market and specialist collaboration for more complex client needs.
- Advisor workflow, CRM, planning case management, meeting preparation, follow-through, and ongoing review.
- Integration of planning capabilities into NYL360 through governed data, APIs, events, domain experiences, and agentic skills.
- Generative AI and agentic experiences that synthesize information, guide workflows, and enable action while preserving advisor judgment, review, and accountability.
- Evaluate emerging technologies and convert promising capabilities into practical, scalable enterprise solutions.
Provide Hands-On Technical Leadership- Develop reference architectures, prototypes, reference implementations, reusable frameworks, and working examples that accelerate engineering adoption.
- Engage directly in critical architecture and solution-design reviews; contribute to implementation detail or code when needed to validate feasibility or establish a pattern.
- Solve complex technical problems spanning applications, integration, data, cloud, security, platform engineering, and AI.
- Design secure approaches for connecting AI and agents to enterprise data, knowledge, APIs, workflows, and business capabilities.
- Embed responsible AI, privacy, traceability, auditability, quality, escalation, and human oversight into AI-enabled experiences.
- Identify architectural debt, duplication, platform fragmentation, and modernization opportunities, and help teams converge on practical target states.
- Mentor senior engineers and architects, strengthen technical communities, and raise engineering and architecture standards through influence and collaboration.
What You'll Bring- 15+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, enterprise architecture, AI/ML engineering, platform engineering, or related technical disciplines.
- Demonstrated success setting technical direction across complex enterprise environments involving multiple applications, platforms, data domains, and engineering teams.
- Deep expertise in modern application and distributed-system architecture, including cloud, APIs, services, events, integration, data, security, resilience, observability, and DevSecOps.
- Strong experience with Generative AI and agentic AI, including LLM-based systems, retrieval and grounding, context engineering, agent orchestration, tool integration, evaluation, guardrails, and observability.
- Proven ability to translate business strategy into target architectures, reusable patterns, prototypes, and practical implementation guidance.
- Strong hands-on technical credibility and the ability to engage deeply in architecture, design, experimentation, and complex engineering decisions.
- Exceptional systems thinking and the ability to solve ambiguous problems that cross organizational and technology boundaries.
- Demonstrated ability to influence senior business and technology leaders through clear communication, sound judgment, technical credibility, and pragmatic decision-making.
- A record of mentoring senior technical talent and elevating engineering practices without relying on direct reporting authority.
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
Preferred Experience- Experience in financial planning, insurance, wealth management, advisor technology, or another highly regulated environment.
- Experience modernizing complex enterprise ecosystems into composable, API- and event-enabled architectures.
- Experience designing AI-enabled experiences that combine enterprise data, workflow, decision support, and human judgment.
- Experience with responsible AI architectures where security, privacy, explainability, traceability, auditability, and human accountability are essential.
- Familiarity with advisor and client journeys, household data, planning and calculation engines, CRM, specialist-support workflows, or enterprise experience platforms.
What Success Looks Like- Field Experience has a clear, modern architecture direction that connects portfolio priorities while allowing capabilities to evolve with appropriate autonomy.
- Reusable application, integration, data, and AI patterns accelerate delivery, improve consistency, and reduce unnecessary duplication.
- NYL360 and Field Experience capabilities work together through well-defined interfaces, trusted context, and composable experiences.
- Generative AI and agentic capabilities progress from experimentation to secure, scalable, observable, and measurable adoption.
- Planning is reimagined for the new world, bringing together trusted data, planning intelligence, specialist expertise, modern experiences, and responsible AI to create more connected advisor and client journeys.
- Engineering and architecture teams benefit from stronger technical patterns, prototypes, mentorship, and hands-on technical leadership.
- New York Life is positioned to adopt emerging technologies while maintaining the security, resilience, governance, and trust expected in financial services.
Job Level: LEVELPF6Pay TransparencySalary Range: $185,000-$264,500
Overtime eligible: Exempt
Discretionary bonus eligible: Yes
Sales bonus eligible: No
Actual base salary will be determined based on several factors but not limited to individual's experience, skills, qualifications, and job location. Additionally, employees are eligible for an annual discretionary bonus. In addition to base salary, employees may also be eligible to participate in an incentive program.
Our BenefitsWe provide a full package of benefits for employees - and have unique offerings for a modern workforce, including leave programs, adoption assistance, and student loan repayment programs. Based on feedback from our employees, we continue to refine and add benefits to our offering, so that you can flourish both inside and outside of work.Click hereto discover more about our comprehensive benefit options or visit our NYL Benefits Site.
