Position Summary: As a founding engineer of the newly formed Innovation team, you will build and ship solutions with real complexity and scale to tens of thousands of clients. You will also play a key role in foundational decisions about architecture, design, systems, data, and product, wearing both Engineering and Product hats.
This is a rare opportunity to build product at the 0 to 1 stage, and ship it immediately to scale. You will work directly with Will Peng, Chief Innovation Officer - a former founder of a fintech company that raised $40M and exited in 2025.
The Innovation Team at Cerity Partners Cerity Partners' Innovation Team is the firm's center of excellence for the strategy and deployment of technology and applied AI.
We are combining the best of technology and professional services to build the future of financial services. We believe the biggest opportunity is in the application of AI to scaled, complex industries like wealth and investment management - to raise the bar for quality of service, in service to our clients.
This is a rare opportunity to join a generational company at a key inflection point. We are extremely ambitious and entrepreneurial, and approach innovation with a "blank sheet of paper" mindset - so there will be no shortage of exciting technical challenges to work on.
We approach every problem through the lens of experience and design, with the client at the center. Our team partners with colleagues across the entire business to understand workflows, and create cohesive experiences across the client, advisor, and colleague journey.
Our vision is to build the new OS of wealth intelligence. We are building the entire AI stack - harness, context, memory, evals, agents, models, workflows, data, knowledge - both in applying it to wealth management, as well as in how we work and collaborate with each other.
By fully leveraging the insights and institutional expertise of the firm, we will move the firm into a client-first, AI-native era.
Primary Responsibilities:- Own the end-to-end experience: The Innovation Team is highly autonomous, and you will be responsible for full user journeys and business goals, not just a silo. You will build the solution or partner with the best vendor - whatever is the best for the need - and integrate them into a cohesive platform. You will have the opportunity to build both 0-to-1, as well as scale products post-launch.
- Build in partnership with clients, advisors, and colleagues: Identify high value opportunities, understand their needs and root problems, map workflows, test prototypes and hypotheses, and build and advocate for the best experience.
- Establish foundational engineering principles and product strategy: The decisions you make about engineering and product are the foundation of our platform, architecture, data, client experience, advisor experience, and colleague experience. These are decisions that can drive business strategy, goals, differentiation, and prioritization.
- Build at the cutting edge of applied AI: Work across every part of the AI stack - harness, context, memory, evals, agents, models - both in applying it to wealth management, as well as in how we work and collaborate.
Required Qualifications: - Years of experience: Minimum of 7 years
- Financial services industry experience required - understanding of wealth management, investment advisory, or related financial services operations
- Demonstrated experience in AI tooling, models, harnesses, workflows
- Demonstrated ability to operate in ambiguity and building 0-to-1 products from first principles rather than established processes.
- Expertise and experience with Claude Code, Codex, or similar
Skills and Competencies: - You have a track record of outsized impact: Your impact extends beyond individual features. Your work has created broad, lasting results on the customer, your colleagues, and in the foundational systems that endure.
- You are a systems thinker: You are able to see the bigger picture and the patterns that emerge. You are able to consider decisions in the broader context, and know what are the most important factors to consider
- You have excellent product and business intuition: You know what decisions will have wide-ranging impact. You put experience and the user first. You know where to cut, and what is important.
- You lead with agency: You take initiative and move work forward independently. You navigate obstacles resourcefully while building the trust, alignment, and influence needed to mobilize others and amplify your impact.
- You move quickly with rigor: You have a bias towards action for learning. You balance speed and quality, demonstrating a high shipping velocity, rapid learning, and a hypothesis-driven approach.
- You thrive in ambiguity: You are energized by new, undefined, ambiguous spaces, and excel in shaping the right approach as the space changes quickly. You are humble and adaptable. You have a demonstrated record of creating and shipping real products-not simply operating within established systems. As a founding engineer, you will help define the systems themselves.
- You are passionate about AI: You have experience building and shipping AI agents and harnesses. You stay close to emerging capabilities, continually experimenting to identify where they create meaningful opportunity.
- You do your best work when collaborating with others: You love working with cross-functional teams, connecting feedback, workflows, and downstream implications to make coherent decisions across the organization
Compensation Range: $190,000 - $290,000 (salary & bonus)
Why Cerity Partners:Our people drive our success by working together to deliver exceptional service to our clients. Below is a glimpse of the key elements of our total rewards package:
- Health, dental, and vision insurance - day 1!
- 401(k) savings and investment plan options with 4% match
- Financial assistance for advanced education and professional designations
- Opportunity to give back time to local communities
