AVP AI Platform Engineer
Independent Bank
- Location
- Onsite (East Lansing, MI · Grand Rapids, MI · Ionia, MI · Muskegon, MI · Traverse City, MI · +1 more)
- Employment
- Full-time
- Level
- Senior Level
About the Role
Independent Bank is seeking an AVP AI Platform Engineer to design, administer, and secure the bank's AI platforms. This role involves leading applied AI research and development to deploy scalable, production-ready solutions that drive business value across the organization.
Skills
Benefits
- Flexible paid time off
Perks
- Volunteer opportunities
Full job details
Be Proud, Be YOU, Be Independent!
Are you an experienced Developer and/or Architect who is eager to grow their career in both Financial Services and AI Technology? If so, we need you!
At Independent Bank, we live our values of Courage, Drive, Integrity, People-Focus, and Teamwork. We foster professional growth and embrace the collective strength of your unique experiences, ideas, and talents. Our inclusive, collaborative culture helps us deliver the best solutions for our clients and communities as we pursue our mission: Inspiring financial independence today, with tomorrow in mind!
About the Job:
As our AVP, AI Platform Engineer, you’ll be at the center of building the future of AI at Independent Bank—designing, administering, securing, and continuously advancing the Bank’s AI platforms and AI-enabled solutions. In this highly impactful role, you’ll blend hands-on platform engineering with applied research and development, solution architecture, and operational support to turn innovative ideas into reliable, production-ready capabilities. You’ll own and manage our enterprise AI tools—including n8n, Retell, and ChatGPT Enterprise—while designing and deploying local AI inference solutions that push the boundaries of what’s possible. Partnering closely with business, technology, data, security, and risk teams, you’ll deliver AI solutions that are not only secure, scalable, and resilient, but that also drive clear, measurable business value across the organization.
Why You Should Apply:
- Competitive compensation package.
- Accommodating and flexible paid time off.
- A knowledgeable, goal-driven, and exciting team of colleagues.
- Exposure to different areas of banking and the ability to work with leaders within the industry.
- Community-focused events and volunteer opportunities.
What You Will Do:
- Administer and support the Bank’s AI platforms, including n8n, Retell, ChatGPT Enterprise, and related services, with responsibility for configuration, access, integrations, environments, vendor coordination, and platform lifecycle management.
- Design, build, deploy, and maintain the AI platform capabilities, reusable services, development standards, integrations, and tooling that enable developers to securely create and operate AI-enabled workflows, automations, agents, and business solutions.
- Design and implement local AI inference solutions, including hardware selection, deployment, networking, containerization, model hosting, security segmentation, performance tuning, and operational support.
- Evaluate, test, benchmark, and recommend AI models, tools, frameworks, and infrastructure based on quality, latency, cost, security, reliability, and business fit.
- Lead applied AI research and development efforts, creating proofs of concept and technical recommendations that can be transitioned into governed production solutions.
- Establish and maintain technical standards for AI platforms, including authentication, authorization, secrets management, logging, monitoring, change management, resiliency, and incident response.
- Monitor platform health, utilization, costs, performance, capacity, and security events; identify and implement improvements proactively.
- Partner with AI, Data Management, IT Operations, and Cyber teams to design secure, scalable, and supportable AI platform architecture, standards, and operating models.
- Create and maintain technical documentation, architecture diagrams, operating procedures, support materials, and platform roadmaps.
- Support AI governance requirements by ensuring platforms and solutions follow approved data handling, vendor management, security, model risk, and change-control practices.
- Other job duties as required.
What We’re Looking For:
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Data Science, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience.
- 5+ years of experience in systems engineering, cloud engineering, software engineering, platform engineering, infrastructure, or a related technical field.
- Demonstrated experience supporting enterprise applications, APIs, integrations, and production technology platforms; strong experience with Docker/containerization, Linux administration, networking, authentication, secrets management, and scripting or programming languages such as Python, JavaScript, or TypeScript.
- Experience with AI/ML platforms, large language models, model APIs, agentic workflows, automation platforms, or related technologies.
- Experience with n8n, Retell, ChatGPT Enterprise, Azure AI services, local inference environments, GPU-enabled hardware, model-serving frameworks, or open-weight models is preferred.
- Strong analytical, troubleshooting, documentation, project-management, and communication skills; ability to clearly explain complex technical concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Experience in financial services, regulated environments, cloud platforms, Azure Entra ID, Azure Key Vault, SQL Server, GitHub, CI/CD, or technology governance is preferred.
This is an exciting step in a journey to creating a fulfilling and rewarding career at Independent Bank. We are excited to have you join our team!
Be Proud. Be YOU. Be Independent!
Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities.
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