Applied AI Engineering Lead

Summary: Leads the architecture, development, and deployment of scalable AI solutions that support investment decision-making, portfolio intelligence, and risk management. Manages a team of AI engineers and applied data scientists while moving AI initiatives into secure, production-grade platforms.

Position Overview

Apollo is a high-growth, global alternative asset manager. In our asset management business, we seek to provide our clients excess return at every point along the risk-reward spectrum from investment grade credit to private equity. For more than three decades, our investing expertise across our fully integrated platform has served the financial return needs of our clients and provided businesses with innovative capital solutions for growth. Through Athene, our retirement services business, we specialize in helping clients achieve financial security by providing a suite of retirement savings products and acting as a solutions provider to institutions. Our patient, creative, and knowledgeable approach to investing aligns our clients, businesses we invest in, our employees, and the communities we impact, to expand opportunity and achieve positive outcomes. As of June 30, 2026, Apollo had approximately $1.05 trillion of assets under management.

Apollo and Athene are together building a strategic growth hub in Austin — a new office incubating emerging businesses across our combined asset management and retirement solutions platform, spanning product, distribution, infrastructure, and market-making. The Austin team offers the opportunity to build from the ground up with the backing of both firms' scale. This role will be based in Austin.

Apollo is seeking an Engineering Lead to lead the build-out and delivery of the firm’s enterprise AI engineering capabilities. Reporting to the Head of Innovation and AI Engineering, this individual will be responsible for architecting, developing, and deploying scalable AI solutions that directly enhance investment decision-making, portfolio intelligence, risk management, and firmwide productivity. This role requires deep technical expertise combined with strong commercial judgment. The successful candidate will lead hands-on engineering efforts while managing a high-performing team, ensuring that AI initiatives move beyond proof-of-concept and into secure, production-grade platforms that drive measurable business impact.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Lead the engineering design, build, and deployment of Apollo’s AI platforms, including large language model (LLM) infrastructure, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) frameworks, model orchestration layers, and secure API services.
• Oversee the end-to-end AI development lifecycle, including data ingestion, feature engineering, model integration, testing, validation, monitoring, and production support.
• Write high-quality, production-grade code (primarily in Python) and establish engineering standards for maintainability, performance, and security.
• Lead the full AI system lifecycle: data ingestion, preprocessing, feature engineering, model integration, evaluation, deployment, monitoring, and optimization.
• Evaluate, fine-tune, and deploy foundation models; implement vector databases and embedding pipelines; optimize prompt engineering and context management strategies.
• Establish engineering best practices for MLOps, version control, model observability, drift detection, explainability, and lifecycle management.
• Partner with Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, Data, Risk, and Legal & Compliance teams to ensure AI systems meet regulatory, data privacy, and information security standards.
• Evaluate and implement third-party AI technologies and cloud services where appropriate, balancing build-versus-buy decisions with long-term strategic value.
• Mentor and develop a team of AI engineers and applied data scientists, fostering a culture of technical rigor, intellectual curiosity, and accountability.
• Stay abreast of advancements in machine learning, generative AI, and enterprise AI tooling, applying emerging capabilities in a disciplined and commercially pragmatic manner.

Qualifications & Experience

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, machine learning engineering, or applied AI, with significant experience delivering production AI systems in complex enterprises.
• Demonstrated leadership experience managing engineering teams in financial services, asset management, banking, insurance, or similarly regulated environments.
• Deep expertise in Python and modern AI/ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face, LangChain, LlamaIndex, or similar).
• Demonstrated experience deploying LLM-powered applications in production, including RAG architectures, vector databases, prompt engineering, and API orchestration.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, data engineering pipelines, and cloud-native architectures (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Proven experience implementing MLOps best practices, including model versioning, CI/CD, monitoring, and performance optimization.
• Proven ability to partner effectively with senior business stakeholders and translate technical concepts into practical applications.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related technical discipline; advanced degree preferred or equivalent experience.

Preferred

• Experience supporting alternative asset managers, global investment banks, insurance platforms, or large institutional investors.
• Demonstrated success delivering AI-enabled tools for investment research, document intelligence, financial modeling, or workflow automation.
• Familiarity with foundation model fine-tuning, vector databases, knowledge graph integration, and enterprise search architectures.
• Experience scaling small, high-impact engineering teams within fast-growing organizations.
• External engagement in the AI community, including publications, open-source contributions, or industry speaking engagements.

ABOUT APOLLO

Apollo is a high-growth, global alternative asset manager. In our asset management business, we seek to provide our clients excess return at every point along the risk-reward spectrum from investment grade credit to private equity. For more than three decades, our investing expertise across our fully integrated platform has served the financial return needs of our clients and provided businesses with innovative capital solutions for growth. Through Athene, our retirement services business, we specialize in helping clients achieve financial security by providing a suite of retirement savings products and acting as a solutions provider to institutions. Our patient, creative, and knowledgeable approach to investing aligns our clients, businesses we invest in, our employees, and the communities we impact, to expand opportunity and achieve positive outcomes. As of March 31, 2026, Apollo had approximately $1.03 trillion of assets under management. To learn more, please visit http://www.apollo.com.

OUR PURPOSE AND CORE VALUES

We are building something rare: a firm where extraordinary people can do the best work of their careers — and build whole careers here. We play to win, we operate with no walls, and we are uncompromising about what we expect from one another. This is a place where the best idea wins, every voice is expected to be heard, and we can count on each other in the moments that matter. That is what it means to be One Apollo.

We ask “what if” to create what is, because yesterday’s strategies may not solve tomorrow’s challenges. The answer? Rigorous thinking and innovative solutions for an ever-changing world. Our clients rely on our investment acumen to help secure their future. We must never lose our focus and determination to be the best investors and most trusted partners on their behalf. We strive to be:

The leading provider of retirement income solutions to institutions, companies, and individuals.

The leading provider of capital solutions to companies. Our breadth and scale enable us to deliver capital for even the largest projects – and our small firm mindset ensures we will be a thoughtful and dedicated partner to these organizations. We are committed to helping them build stronger businesses.

A leading contributor to addressing some of the biggest issues facing the world today – such as energy transition, accelerating the adoption of new technologies, and social impact – where innovative approaches to investing can make a positive difference.

As principal investors, we invest alongside our clients, combining disciplined underwriting with our integrated platform to deliver solutions across market cycles.

We have built a leading alternative asset management and retirement services platform by *staying true* to our core principles of:

Clean Sheet Thinking

No Walls

Flat and Informal

Principal Mindset

Right Over Easy

Life’s Work

As One Apollo team, we believe that doing great work and having fun go hand in hand, and we are proud of what we can achieve together.

To learn more about our unique culture and what makes Apollo Apollo, please review our culture deck: [Apollo Culture Deck](https://www.apollo.com/content/dam/apolloaem/documents/about-apollo/what-makes-apollo-apollo.pdf)

OUR BENEFITS

Apollo is committed to providing innovative and competitive benefits that support the wellbeing of our employees and their families around the globe.

*The base salary range for this position is :*

This position is also eligible for a discretionary annual bonus based on personal, team, and Firm performance. Compensation ranges are based on several factors including job function, level, and geographic location. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed here.

Apollo Global Management, Inc. (together with its subsidiaries and affiliates) is committed to championing opportunity.

The firm and its affiliates comply with applicable discrimination and equal opportunities legislation in all of its jurisdictions and do not discriminate in employment or recruitment based on race, color, religion, gender, national origin, veteran status, disability, age, citizenship, marital or domestic/civil partnership status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.

The contents of the qualifications and experience section of this job description are a guideline only. If an applicant can otherwise demonstrate their suitability for the role they will be considered.