Staff Data/AI Engineer

Job Description

What’s the opportunity?

We’re looking for a Staff Data/AI Engineer to join RBC Borealis to design and implement AI solutions across Personal Banking & Commercial Banking. In this role, you will build and scale advanced data and ML engineering pipelines, agentic AI systems, and Large Language Model (LLM) applications. You will ensure solutions are secure and grounded in high-quality, trusted data. Working closely with business and platform teams, you will translate complex banking problems into deployable AI systems that are reliable, explainable, and compliant. This is a unique opportunity to work with a team of passionate builders committed to bringing advanced AI into the enterprise at scale.

Your responsibilities include:

• Build and maintain scalable batch and streaming data pipelines to ingest, transform, and curate high-quality datasets for AI and agentic workflows
• Implement DataOps and MLOps automation, including CI/CD pipelines, data validation checks, ML model deployment, monitoring, and drift detection
• Develop and integrate AI services such as LLM-powered APIs, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, and agent orchestration logic into secure, production-grade environments
• Design and optimize data models, feature stores, and storage patterns to ensure performance, reliability, and governance across AI workloads
• Write production-quality code, conduct code reviews, troubleshoot performance issues, and continuously improve system reliability, scalability, and observability

You’re our ideal candidate if you have:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field, with 5+ years of experience in data, software, ML, or AI engineering
• Proficiency in writing clean, maintainable code (i.e. Python, Java, SQL, Spark) with strong software engineering fundamentals, including version control, testing, and code review best practices
• Experience developing and integrating AI-powered systems such as LLM applications, RAG pipelines, or agent-based workflows into secure, production environments
• Deep understanding of data modeling, distributed systems, storage optimization, and performance turning for large-scale AI and analytics workloads
• A solid understanding of the ML data lifecycle, including feature engineering, model integration, deployment support, and monitoring
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to translate ambiguous business problems into well-structured technical designs, collaborating effectively with product, platform, and cross-functional engineering teams

What’s in it for you?

• Become part of a team that thinks progressively and works collaboratively. We care about seeing each other reach full potential;
• A comprehensive Total Rewards Program including bonuses and flexible benefits, competitive compensation, commissions, and stock options where applicable;
• Leaders who support your development through coaching and managing opportunities;
• Ability to make a difference and lasting impact from a local-to-global scale.

About RBC Borealis

RBC Borealis is the driving force behind Royal Bank of Canada’s AI and data innovation. As part of Canada’s largest financial institution, we bring together a team of architects, engineers, scientists, and product experts on a mission to revolutionize finance through world-class research, solutions, and a resilient data platform. With locations across Toronto, Waterloo, Montreal, Calgary, and Vancouver, we’re at the forefront of AI research and platform development. With a focus on cutting-edge research in areas like time series forecasting, causal machine learning, and responsible AI, we are seamlessly integrating AI research and data engineering, to solve critical challenges in the financial industry. We are building intelligent, and scalable, data-driven solutions that will help communities thrive and drive innovation for our customers across the bank.

Inclusion and Equal Opportunity Employment

RBC is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion. We are pleased to consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, protected veterans status, Aboriginal/Native American status or any other legally-protected factors. Disability-related accommodations during the application process are available upon r…