Bank of America Corporation

Principal Engineer - RAG Database & Embeddings Architect

Bank of America Corporation$130K — $160K *
Finance & Insurance
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 10+ years in software, data, platform, or AI engineering.
  • 5+ years in large-scale enterprise system design.
  • 2+ years with LLM, RAG, or AI platform capabilities.
  • Experience in regulated, security-conscious environments.
  • Strong background in vector databases and search optimization.
  • Hands-on with Azure AI Search, Cosmos DB, and equivalent platforms.
  • Bachelor's degree in a technical field.

Responsibilities

  • Develops an engineering approach for program/portfolio solutions.
  • Leads planning and design of complex features across teams.
  • Creates complex technology and solution development ideas.
  • Provides technical oversight during solution development.
  • Defines technology tool stack for solutions.
  • Explores new technologies to enhance development efficiency.
  • Implements end-to-end test strategies for solutions.

Benefits

  • Emphasis on innovation and technology advancement.
  • Opportunity to influence cross-team technical direction.
  • Support for career development through mentoring.
  • Engagement with state-of-the-art AI engineering practices.
Full Job Description
Job Description:

This job is responsible for defining and leading the engineering approach for solutions at the program or portfolio level, to deliver significant business outcomes. Key responsibilities include continuously improving the design, quality, and reuse of the solution and delivering technology enablers that improve development efficiencies for the solution. Job expectations include familiarity with at least one area of engineering, acting as a "go to" reference across the organization, and applying knowledge to improve technical competencies through recruitment and development activities.

Developer Experience (DevEx) provides enterprise technical standards and common technical services, platforms, and tools that are leveraged by delivery teams across all lines of business. Within the SDLC Software Delivery Lifecycle program, this role leads portfolio product delivery strategy and execution for enterprise software delivery capabilities, ensuring the right investments, operating model, governance, and prioritization are in place to improve how internal technical users build, test, and deliver software at scale.

The RAG Database & Embeddings Architect is responsible for designing, building, and governing the vector database and retrieval architecture that powers enterprise Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems. This role focuses on embeddings, vectorization strategies, semantic search, indexing, metadata modeling, hybrid retrieval, relevance tuning, and performance optimization.

This engineer will define how enterprise knowledge is represented, stored, retrieved, ranked, and refreshed for use by LLM-powered applications.

Responsibilities:

  • Develops the engineering approach for the entire program/portfolio solution and works with Architecture, to develop/analyze/deliver the implementation of technical enablers
  • Leads the planning, definition, and design of the complex features which span multiple teams and explore solution alternatives
  • Creates ideas on designing complex technology and solution development approaches
  • Leads the technical oversight for teams in solution development including design reviews and code within own domain
  • Defines the technology tool stack for the solution within ranged of internally approved and supported technologies
  • Explores state-of-the-art technologies to improve development efficiencies, quality of test/QA coverage, and release management
  • Leads and is responsible for the end-to-end test strategy/creation/adherence, and the integration between teams for a program/portfolio solution
  • Improve the experience for our developers, making it easier to deliver industry-leading solutions, while managing work efficiently and with the right controls
  • Advance our technology platforms through innovation
  • Reduce risk and improve quality across our technology portfolio by aligning to a single enterprise architecture strategy and delivering governance that enables consistency, integration and automation
  • Design and own the architecture for enterprise RAG data stores, including vector databases, document stores, metadata stores, and hybrid search layers.
  • Define embedding strategies across structured, semi-structured, and unstructured content.
  • Evaluate and select embedding models based on accuracy, latency, cost, domain fit, multilingual needs, and operational constraints.
  • Design vectorization workflows including chunking, embedding generation, indexing, versioning, and re-embedding lifecycle management.
  • Implement semantic, keyword, metadata-filtered, and hybrid retrieval patterns.
  • Optimize retrieval quality using similarity metrics, reranking, query expansion, metadata boosting, and relevance feedback.
  • Establish standards for vector schema design, namespace strategy, document lineage, source attribution, and access-control-aware retrieval.
  • Partner with data pipeline engineers to ensure ingestion processes produce high-quality, retrievable content.
  • Partner with context engineers to tune retrieval outputs for downstream LLM consumption.
  • Define observability for retrieval quality, including recall, precision, latency, cost, freshness, and hallucination risk indicators.
  • Lead technical evaluation of vector database platforms and retrieval frameworks.
  • Provide engineering leadership, design reviews, mentoring, and architectural guidance across AI platform teams.
  • Serve as a senior technical authority for enterprise AI platform engineering.
  • Own architecture decisions that impact multiple teams, systems, or domains.
  • Create reusable patterns, reference architectures, standards, and engineering guardrails.
  • Mentor senior engineers and influence technical direction without requiring direct reporting authority.
  • Balance innovation with operational reliability, security, compliance, scalability, and cost management.
  • Communicate complex AI and data engineering concepts clearly to engineering, product, risk, security, and executive stakeholders.


Required Qualification:

  • 10+ years of software engineering, data engineering, platform engineering, or AI engineering experience.
  • 5+ years designing large-scale enterprise systems.
  • 2+ years working with LLM, RAG, vector search, semantic search, or AI platform capabilities.
  • Experience operating systems in regulated, security-conscious, or enterprise-scale environments.
  • Extensive experience designing production-grade search, indexing, or database systems.
  • Strong understanding of vector databases, embeddings, similarity search, approximate nearest neighbor algorithms, and retrieval optimization.
  • Experience with RAG architectures and enterprise-scale knowledge retrieval.
  • Hands-on experience with platforms such as Azure AI Search, Cosmos DB vector search, Pinecone, Weaviate, Milvus, OpenSearch, Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL/pgvector, or equivalent.
  • Experience with embedding models from providers such as OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Cohere, Hugging Face, or open-source model ecosystems.
  • Strong background in distributed systems, database design, API design, and performance tuning.
  • Experience designing metadata models, access control filtering, document provenance, and auditability.
  • Ability to define engineering patterns and standards used across multiple teams.
  • Proven ability to lead architecture across multiple engineering teams.
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills.
  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Applied Mathematics, or a related technical field


Desired Qualifications:
  • Experience with hybrid retrieval, reranking models, knowledge graphs, or entity-aware retrieval.
  • Experience supporting regulated or enterprise environments with security, compliance, lineage, and privacy requirements.
  • Experience with LLM evaluation, retrieval evaluation, and automated relevance testing.
  • Familiarity with model drift, embedding drift, and re-indexing strategies.
  • High-quality retrieval architecture that improves LLM answer accuracy and reduces hallucinations.
  • Scalable vector database strategy supporting multiple enterprise domains.
  • Clear standards for embeddings, metadata, indexing, and retrieval evaluation.
  • Measurable improvements in retrieval precision, recall, latency, and cost efficiency.
  • Enterprise architecture
  • Distributed systems design
  • AI platform engineering
  • Data governance and security
  • Cloud-native engineering
  • Observability and operational excellence
  • Technical strategy and roadmap development
  • Cross-functional influence
  • Vendor and platform evaluation
  • Production support and continuous improvement


Skills:
  • Automation
  • Influence
  • Result Orientation
  • Stakeholder Management
  • Technical Strategy Development
  • Application Development
  • Architecture
  • Business Acumen
  • Risk Management
  • Solution Design
  • Agile Practices
  • Analytical Thinking
  • Collaboration
  • Data Management
  • Solution Delivery Process


Shift:
1st shift (United States of America)

Hours Per Week:
40

About Bank of America Corporation

Bank of America Merrill Lynch is the corporate and investment banking division of Bank of America. It provides services in mergers and acquisitions, equity and debt capital markets, lending, trading, risk management, research, and liquidity and payments management. It was formed through the combination of the corporate and investment banking activities of Bank of America and Merrill Lynch following the acquisition of the latter by the former in January 2009. Bank of America completed the acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co on 1 January 2009. Bank of America began rebranding all of its corporate and investment banking activities under the Bank of America Merrill Lynch name in September 2009. In April 2010, Bank of America Merrill Lynch appointed Christian Meissner as head of investment banking for Europe, Middle East and Africa. In April 2011, Bank of America Merrill Lynch integrated its corporate and investment banking operations into a single division. In October 2013, Bank of America Merrill Lynch was recognised as the Most Innovative Investment Bank of the Year in The Banker's Investment Banking Awards.

Bank of America Corporation Careers

Join the dynamic team at Bank of America Corporation, a premier global financial institution where innovation, leadership, and growth go hand in hand. As one of the largest banks in the world, we offer unparalleled job opportunities and a culture that values diversity, inclusion, and professional growth. Work You’ll Do At Bank of America Corporation, you’ll be part of a team that’s dedicated to making a real difference. Whether you’re helping families buy their first home, advising businesses on expansion, or developing cutting-edge financial technologies, your work will have an impact. Our commitment to leadership in the financial industry has never been stronger, and we need passionate, skilled professionals to lead our journey. Explore a World of Opportunities From entry-level positions to leadership roles, Bank of America Corporation offers a variety of career paths in areas such as investment banking, technology, marketing, and risk management. Our job opportunities span the globe, providing the chance to work alongside the best in the industry and develop skills that will propel your career forward. Internship Programs Kickstart your career with Bank of America Corporation’s internship programs. These opportunities provide hands-on experience and a chance to engage in meaningful work that complements your academic studies. Interns gain invaluable networking opportunities, receive mentorship from seasoned professionals, and learn about the culture and operations of a global financial leader. Benefits and Growth Bank of America Corporation is committed to the well-being and continuous professional development of our team members. We offer a competitive benefits package that supports the health, financial stability, and work-life balance of our employees. Our training programs and development initiatives ensure that every team member has the opportunity to grow and advance within the company. Inclusive Culture We believe our strength lies in our diversity. Bank of America Corporation fosters an inclusive environment where all employees can thrive. Through diversity training and a commitment to equal opportunities, we cultivate leadership and innovation that reflect the wide-ranging communities we serve. Join Our Team Are you ready to advance your career at a company that’s at the forefront of the financial industry? Explore the positions available at Bank of America Corporation and find where your skills and interests align with our needs. We are continuously hiring and looking for individuals who are curious, creative, and eager to drive change. Stay Connected Keep up to date with the latest from Bank of America Corporation Careers by subscribing to our job alert emails. Tailor your subscription to receive updates that match your career interests and get insider tips that can help you during your application and interview process. Bank of America Corporation is not just a company—it’s a place where you can shape your future and the future of finance. Join us and be part of a team that’s redefining what a bank can be.
Learn more about Bank of America Corporation
Size
208,000 employees
Market Cap
$260.3 billion
Industry
Net Income
$17.8 billion
Founded
1998
5 Year Trend
-1.4%
NASDAQ

Similar Jobs

More Jobs at Bank of America Corporation

More Finance & Insurance Jobs

Find similar Principal Engineer - RAG Database & Embeddings Architect jobs: