Director - Data & AI Solutions - Financial Services, Actuarial - REMOTE

As a team member in Finance at Nationwide, a Fortune 100 company with nearly $70 billion in annual sales, the opportunities are endless! Let Nationwide help create your career journey! At Nationwide®, “on your side” goes beyond just words. Our customers are at the center of everything we do and we’re looking for associates who are passionate about delivering extraordinary care.

Nationwide is seeking a forward-thinking technology leader to drive enterprise-scale data, analytics, cloud modernization, and artificial intelligence solutions across Nationwide Financial’ s Actuarial organization. This role is ideal for a hands-on data and technology strategist who can translate business priorities into scalable, secure, cloud-native solutions and help actuarial teams adopt modern data and AI-enabled ways of working.

Reporting to the Senior Technical Director, you will serve as a trusted advisor and primary liaison between actuarial and business stakeholders and technology teams. You will identify high-value opportunities, lead discovery and solution-design discussions, shape technology roadmaps, and guide delivery across data, platform engineering, DevOps, security, governance, architecture, and application development teams. This role will also provide technical leadership and mentoring to others.

What You’ll Do

• Partner with actuarial leaders, business stakeholders, and digital teams to prioritize and deliver data, analytics, automation, and technology opportunities.
• Modernize legacy processes and applications into cloud-native, data-driven, and AI-enabled solutions.
• Design and govern modern data platforms using technologies such as Snowflake, Databricks, AWS, data lakes, lakehouse architectures, and open table formats.
• Establish practical standards for data quality, metadata, lineage, governance, security, access controls, and data observability.
• Identify responsible opportunities to apply generative AI, machine learning, analytics, and automation to improve productivity, decision-making, and operational efficiency.
• Lead discovery sessions, capability assessments, architecture reviews, solution-design workshops, and technology evaluations.
• Recommend improvements to platform scalability, resilience, performance, and cost optimization.
• Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both executive and technical audiences and influence strategic technology investments.

What You’ll Bring

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, information systems, or a related technical discipline highly preferred.
• 10+ years of hands-on experience in data architecture, data engineering, analytics, and enterprise solution architecture.
• 5+ years designing and implementing cloud-native modern data platforms using Snowflake, Databricks, and AWS.
• 3+ years delivering AI, machine learning, generative AI, or agentic AI solutions into production environments.
• Proven experience leading enterprise-scale digital transformation, data modernization, and AI adoption initiatives.
• Strong expertise in modern data platform architecture, lakehouse architectures, and cloud-native design principles.
• Demonstrated success partnering directly with business stakeholders to develop technology roadmaps and solution strategies.
• Strong architectural thinking, executive communication, strategic problem-solving, and the ability to influence without direct authority.

Additional Experience That’s Valuable

• Python, SQL, PySpark, API integration, CI/CD, DevOps, and infrastructure as code.
• Experience applying AI, analytics, or automation to business processes with appropriate governance and controls.
• Snowflake, Databricks, machine learning, or generative AI certifications.
• Experience with data lakes, medallion architecture, Parquet, Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, data interoperability, metadata management, data lineage, data governance, and observability.
• Insurance or actuarial experience, or a strong interest in learning actuarial business processes and translating them into technology solutions.
• Experience working with Enterprise Data Office, Infrastructure, platform engineering, security, governance, or architecture organizations.

Why this opportunity This is an opportunity to shape how a major financial services organization uses data, analytics, cloud platforms, and AI to improve actuarial processes and business outcomes. You’ll have meaningful enterprise scope, visibility with …