Managing Director, AI Engineering & Data Platforms

Over the last 20 years, Ares’ success has been driven by our people and our culture. Today, our team is guided by our core values – Collaborative, Responsible, Entrepreneurial, Self-Aware, Trustworthy – and our purpose to be a catalyst for shared prosperity and a better future. Through our recruitment, career development and employee-focused programming, we are committed to fostering a welcoming and inclusive work environment where high-performance talent of diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives can build careers within this exciting and growing industry.

Job Description

Ares is seeking a Managing Director-level technology executive to serve as Head of AI Engineering and Data Platforms, a critical leadership role responsible for the engineering design, delivery, and operation of the firm’s enterprise Data and AI platforms. This leader will play a central role in enabling Ares’ continued global growth by building highly scalable, secure, and resilient data and AI engineering capabilities that support the full investment lifecycle across Private Credit, Liquid Credit, Private Equity, Real Assets, Secondaries, and related strategies.

Reporting to the Head of Data and AI, the Head of Data and AI Engineering serves as the senior-most engineering authority for data and AI within the firm, translating strategy into execution through disciplined platform engineering, architectural excellence, and operational rigor. This role owns the build and runs of Ares’ core data infrastructure—including enterprise data lakes, cloud-native data platforms, and analytics enablement—while also leading the engineering of next-generation AI platforms leveraging LLMs, RAG-based architecture, and proprietary AI capabilities.

This leader will operate as a hands-on executive engineer, responsible for setting technical direction, establishing engineering standards, and ensuring consistent, high-quality delivery across globally distributed teams. The role requires deep expertise in modern data and AI engineering, strong judgment in build-versus-buy decisions, and the ability to partner effectively with infrastructure, security, and application engineering leaders to deliver platforms that meet enterprise requirements for scale, resiliency, governance, and regulatory compliance.
The successful candidate brings a proven track record of building and operating enterprise-scale data and AI platforms in complex, regulated financial services environments, combined with the leadership presence to influence senior stakeholders and develop high-performing engineering organizations. This role demands both strategic thinking and execution excellence, balancing innovation with stability while ensuring that data and AI platforms deliver measurable business value, accelerate decision-making, and provide durable competitive advantage for the firm

REPORTING RELATIONSHIS

Reports to Head of Data and AI

Supervises:

• Data Engineering Leads
• AI Platforms & Engineering Leads
• Platform Engineering & ML Ops Leads

PRIMARY FUNCTIONS & RESPONSIBILITIES:

Data Engineering & Platform Leadership

• Lead the enterprise Data Engineering function, responsible for ingestion, transformation, modeling, orchestration, and reliability of Ares’ global data platforms.
• Own the design and operation of enterprise data lakes and Lakehouse architectures, supporting investment, client, and corporate use cases.
• Drive scalable, cloud-native data platforms (Azure-first; Databricks preferred) with strong SLAs, observability, and resiliency.
• Establish best-in-class engineering standards for data pipelines, CI/CD, testing, and data quality.

AI Engineering & Platform Development

• Lead AI Engineering and Platform Enablement, building proprietary AI platforms that support:
  • Large Language Models (LLMs)
  • Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
  • Model orchestration, evaluation, and lifecycle management

• Own MLOps and AI platform architecture, including model deployment, monitoring, governance, and security.
• Partner closely with the Head of Data and AI to execute the AI build vs. buy strategy, integrating third-party AI tools while building differentiated internal capabilities.
• Enable AI-driven workflows across the investment lifecycle, operations, and corporate functions.

Architecture & Engineering Excellence

• Define and enforce reference architectures for data and AI platforms across the firm.
• Partner with Infrastructure, Platform Engineering, Security, and Architecture teams to ensure scalability, resiliency, and regulatory compliance.
• Promote modern engineering practices including DevOps, Infrastructure-as-Code, automation, and platform-based delivery models.
• Ensure platforms meet enterprise requirements for security, auditability, and regulatory controls.

Execution, Delivery & Operations

• Own end-to-end engineering delivery, from roadmap execution through production operations.
• Establish delivery metrics (velocity, reliability, cost efficiency, platform adoption).
• Lead vendor selection and management for data and AI engineering tooling.
• Ensure platform stability, uptime, and support for mission-critical investment and client workflows.

Leadership & Talent Development

• Build and lead high-performing global engineering teams across data and AI domains.
• Develop senior engineering leaders and succession pipelines.
• Foster a strong engineering culture focused on quality, accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement.
• Act as a senior technology leader representing Data & AI Engineering in firm-wide forums.

QUALIFICATIONS:

Experience & Background

• 15+ years of progressive technology experience, with significant leadership experience in data and AI engineering within financial services.
• Proven experience building and operating enterprise-scale data platforms and AI systems in asset management, alternatives, banking, or similarly complex regulated environments.
• Demonstrated success leading large, distributed engineering teams and delivering multi-year-old platform transformations.
• Strong track record partnering with senior business and technology executives.

Technical Expertise

• Deep hands-on understanding of:
  • Cloud platforms (Azure preferred; AWS/GCP experience welcome)
  • Databricks, Lakehouse architecture, and modern data stacks
  • AI/ML platforms, LLMs, RAG architectures, and MLOps
• Strong grounding in enterprise architecture, security, identity, and governance.
• Experience integrating commercial AI tools alongside proprietary platforms.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree required, advanced degree preferred.
• Engineering or Computer Science background strongly preferred.

Reporting Relationships

Compensation

$375,000 - $425,000

There is no set deadline to apply for this job opportunity. Applications will be accepted on an ongoing basis until the search is no longer active.