Principal AI Cloud Engineer

The Team

We accelerate BMO's AI journey by building enterprise-grade, cloud-native AI solutions. Our team combines engineering excellence with cutting-edge AI to deliver scalable, secure, and responsible solutions that power business innovation across the bank. We enable and accelerate our partners on their AI journeys across the enterprise, helping teams across BMO unlock value at scale. We support one another in times of need and take pride in our work. We are engineers, AI practitioners, platform builders, thought leaders, multipliers, and coders. Above all, we are a global team of diverse individuals who enjoy working together to create smart, secure, and scalable solutions that make an impact across the enterprise. Our ambition is bold: deploy our capital and resources to their highest and most profitable use through a digital-first operating model, powered by data and AI-driven decisions.

The Impact

As a Principal Cloud AI Engineer, you are a hands-on technical developer who designs, builds, and scales cloud-native AI solutions and products. You help set engineering standards, establish patterns, mentor senior engineers, and partner with multiple teams to deliver resilient, governed, and cost-efficient AI at enterprise scale. You'll help shape and evolve our AI cloud strategy from model serving and LLMOps to security, observability, and compliance so teams across the bank can innovate safely and rapidly.

You will advance BMO's Digital First strategy by:

  • Defining reference and production-grade solutions for AI/GenAI on cloud (AWS preferred; multi-cloud aware).

  • Building reusable, secure, and observable components (APIs, SDKs, microservices, pipelines).

  • Operationalizing LLMs and RAG with strong controls and Responsible AI guardrails.

  • Driving platform roadmaps that enable faster delivery, lower risk, and measurable business outcomes.

What's In It for You

  • Influence the technical direction of enterprise AI and the platform primitives others build on.

  • Ship high-impact systems used across many business lines and products.

  • Work across the full stack: cloud infra, data/feature pipelines, model serving, LLMOps, and DevSecOps.

  • Partner with a leadership team invested in your growth and thought leadership.

Responsibilities

Infrastructure & Platform Builder

  • Design, build, and operate cloud-native AI infrastructure for ML/GenAI workloads:

    • Compute: GPU/CPU clusters, autoscaling, spot instance strategies

    • Networking: AWS VPC, PrivateLink, peering, multi-region HA/DR

    • Storage & Databases: high-performance data lakes (e.g., S3-based data lake), relational DBs, vector DBs (FAISS, Milvus, Pinecone, pgvector)

    • Security: IAM, Secrets Manager / KMS-backed secrets management and encryption, policy-as-code

  • Implement observability and reliability for AI infra:

    • Metrics (latency, throughput, GPU utilization, cost)

    • Logging/tracing (OpenTelemetry), SLOs/SLIs for infra services

  • Build CI/CD and GitOps pipelines for infrastructure-as-code (Terraform/CloudFormation) and AI platform components

  • Drive FinOps for AI infra: GPU rightsizing, caching, inference optimization, cost governance

Application & Service Enablement

  • Enable frontend and backend services for AI platforms:

    • Secure APIs, microservices, and event-driven architectures

    • Integration with custom model runtimes (TensorRT-LLM, vLLM, Triton/KServe)

  • Provide infrastructure support for RAG systems: embeddings, chunking, retrieval pipelines

  • Ensure scalable serving infrastructure for LLMs and ML models with caching and token optimization

Strategy & Architecture

  • Define and evolve AI infrastructure reference architecture for cloud (AWS preferred):

    • Container orchestration (Kubernetes/EKS), service mesh, ingress

    • Serverless/event-driven patterns for AI pipelines

    • Multi-region, HA/DR, compliance-ready designs

  • Establish standards and best practices for containerization, IaC, and secure networking for AI systems

Security, Risk & Governance

  • Implement defense-in-depth for AI infra:

    • IAM least privilege, private networking, KMS/Secrets Manager, SBOM, image signing

  • Ensure compliance and Responsible AI controls at infra level:

    • Data residency, encryption, lineage, audit readiness

Delivery & Operations

  • Lead infrastructure discovery and solution design with stakeholders

  • Operate platforms with SRE principles: error budgets, incident response, chaos testing

  • Mentor engineers; create reusable IaC modules, templates, and golden paths

Must-Have Qualifications

  • Bachelor's/Master's/PhD in CS, Engineering, or related field

  • 7+ years building large-scale distributed cloud infrastructure

  • 5+ years hands-on with AWS (preferred); Azure/GCP nice to have

  • Proven experience with AI/ML infra: GPU clusters, Kubernetes, CI/CD, observability

  • Strong in IaC (Terraform/CloudFormation), Kubernetes, networking, security

  • Expertise in cloud-native patterns: containers, service mesh, serverless

  • Familiarity with MLOps/LLMOps infra: model serving, feature stores, vector DBs

  • Programming in Python (infra automation) and one of Go/TypeScript for tooling

  • Understanding of frontend/backend integration for AI services

  • Familiarity with MLOps/LLMOps infra: model serving, feature stores, vector DBs

  • Programming in Python (infra automation) and one of Go/TypeScript for tooling

  • Understanding of frontend/backend integration for AI services

Nice-to-Have

  • GPU optimization (CUDA/NCCL, TensorRT-LLM)

  • Observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry)

  • Event streaming (Kafka/Kinesis), real-time systems

  • Experience with AI platform products (Amazon SageMaker), MLflow, KServe, Hugging Face

Tech Stack

  • Cloud & Infra: AWS (EKS, Lambda, Kinesis, Secrets Manager/KMS), Terraform/CloudFormation, GitHub Actions/AWS CodePipeline

  • AI Infra: Kubernetes, KServe/Triton, vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, Ray, Spark

  • Ops: Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, ArgoCD, OPA

  • Data: Feature stores (Feast), vector DBs (FAISS, Milvus, Pinecone), relational DBs

  • App Layer: APIs, microservices, frontend/backend integration for AI systems

Success Metrics

  • Reliability & Performance: SLOs met for infra services, GPU utilization optimized

  • Security & Compliance: Zero critical findings, auditable infra

  • Cost Efficiency: Reduced GPU/infra spend via FinOps strategies

  • Developer Velocity: Faster provisioning and deployment of AI infra

  • Technical Leadership: Influence on infra standards, mentorship, reusable patterns

Salary:

$103,200.00 - $192,000.00

Pay Type:

Salaried

The above represents BMO Financial Group's pay range and type.

Salaries will vary based on factors such as location, skills, experience, education, and qualifications for the role, and may include a commission structure. Salaries for part-time roles will be pro-rated based on number of hours regularly worked. For commission roles, the salary listed above represents BMO Financial Group's expected target for the first year in this position.

BMO Financial Group's total compensation package will vary based on the pay type of the position and may include performance-based incentives, discretionary bonuses, as well as other perks and rewards. BMO also offers health insurance, tuition reimbursement, accident and life insurance, and retirement savings plans. To view more details of our benefits, please visit: https://jobs.bmo.com/global/en/Total-Rewards

About Us

At BMO we are driven by a shared Purpose: Boldly Grow the Good in business and life. It calls on us to create lasting, positive change for our customers, our communities and our people. By working together, innovating and pushing boundaries, we transform lives and businesses, and power economic growth around the world.

As a member of the BMO team you are valued, respected and heard, and you have more ways to grow and make an impact. We strive to help you make an impact from day one - for yourself and our customers. We'll support you with the tools and resources you need to reach new milestones, as you help our customers reach theirs. From in-depth training and coaching, to manager support and network-building opportunities, we'll help you gain valuable experience, and broaden your skillset.

To find out more visit us at https://jobs.bmo.com/ca/en.

BMO is committed to an inclusive, equitable and accessible workplace. By learning from each other's differences, we gain strength through our people and our perspectives. Accommodations are available on request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process. To request accommodation, please contact your recruiter.

Note to Recruiters: BMO does not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than directly from a candidate. Any unsolicited resumes sent to BMO, directly or indirectly, will be considered BMO property. BMO will not pay a fee for any placement resulting from the receipt of an unsolicited resume. A recruiting agency must first have a valid, written and fully executed agency agreement contract for service to submit resumes.

Back to blog

Common Interview Questions And Answers

1. HOW DO YOU PLAN YOUR DAY?

This is what this question poses: When do you focus and start working seriously? What are the hours you work optimally? Are you a night owl? A morning bird? Remote teams can be made up of people working on different shifts and around the world, so you won't necessarily be stuck in the 9-5 schedule if it's not for you...

2. HOW DO YOU USE THE DIFFERENT COMMUNICATION TOOLS IN DIFFERENT SITUATIONS?

When you're working on a remote team, there's no way to chat in the hallway between meetings or catch up on the latest project during an office carpool. Therefore, virtual communication will be absolutely essential to get your work done...

3. WHAT IS "WORKING REMOTE" REALLY FOR YOU?

Many people want to work remotely because of the flexibility it allows. You can work anywhere and at any time of the day...

4. WHAT DO YOU NEED IN YOUR PHYSICAL WORKSPACE TO SUCCEED IN YOUR WORK?

With this question, companies are looking to see what equipment they may need to provide you with and to verify how aware you are of what remote working could mean for you physically and logistically...

5. HOW DO YOU PROCESS INFORMATION?

Several years ago, I was working in a team to plan a big event. My supervisor made us all work as a team before the big day. One of our activities has been to find out how each of us processes information...

6. HOW DO YOU MANAGE THE CALENDAR AND THE PROGRAM? WHICH APPLICATIONS / SYSTEM DO YOU USE?

Or you may receive even more specific questions, such as: What's on your calendar? Do you plan blocks of time to do certain types of work? Do you have an open calendar that everyone can see?...

7. HOW DO YOU ORGANIZE FILES, LINKS, AND TABS ON YOUR COMPUTER?

Just like your schedule, how you track files and other information is very important. After all, everything is digital!...

8. HOW TO PRIORITIZE WORK?

The day I watched Marie Forleo's film separating the important from the urgent, my life changed. Not all remote jobs start fast, but most of them are...

9. HOW DO YOU PREPARE FOR A MEETING AND PREPARE A MEETING? WHAT DO YOU SEE HAPPENING DURING THE MEETING?

Just as communication is essential when working remotely, so is organization. Because you won't have those opportunities in the elevator or a casual conversation in the lunchroom, you should take advantage of the little time you have in a video or phone conference...

10. HOW DO YOU USE TECHNOLOGY ON A DAILY BASIS, IN YOUR WORK AND FOR YOUR PLEASURE?

This is a great question because it shows your comfort level with technology, which is very important for a remote worker because you will be working with technology over time...