Associate Director - Model & AI Risk Data Scientist

Overview

Join the Model Risk Management team at Macquarie Group to independently oversee and rigorously challenge model and AI risks across the global organization. This team ensures that AI and models are appropriately controlled, fit for their intended use, aligned with both the company's risk appetite and regulatory guidelines. You will help drive the safe integration of AI technologies through thorough validation and risk-based decision-making.

Macquarie is a global financial services firm present in 30 countries with a track record of 57 years of continuous profitability. The company fosters an empowering environment where you can develop a meaningful career contributing valuable insights and expertise.

Role Responsibilities

• Lead independent validation processes for complex AI applications within various business operations.
• Formulate independent risk assessments and provide credible challenge to senior stakeholders from business, engineering, and governance teams.
• Evaluate whether AI systems perform as designed, are fit for purpose, and ensure related risks are adequately controlled and within Macquarie’s risk tolerance.
• Provide mentorship and coaching to junior team members to enhance technical expertise in AI risk and validation.
• Manage AI validation projects end-to-end, including planning, stakeholder coordination, and timely delivery of quality validation results.
• Conduct independent reviews of AI system architectures, evaluation frameworks, monitoring systems, and control mechanisms, producing evidence-based opinions on risk management effectiveness.
• Contribute to developing and refining AI validation methodologies, standards, practices, and tools to build a scalable validation function aligned with emerging AI challenges.
• Help shape the organization’s approach to independent AI assurance, including validation of generative AI, agent-based AI systems, foundational models, AI observability, and new AI technologies.

Required Skills and Qualifications

• Proven leadership experience with ability to guide, train, and direct teams performing risk-based model and AI validations.
• Strong capability in self-driven learning to rapidly master new technical competencies within fast-evolving AI domains.
• Experience leading complex validation efforts and providing independent challenge on sophisticated, high-impact AI use cases.
• Hands-on expertise in the design, development, and evaluation of AI and generative AI technologies, including Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), multi-agent systems, AI guardrails, synthetic data generation, and Large Language Model (LLM) evaluation frameworks.
• Experience with AI evaluation methods such as red-teaming, robustness testing, benchmarking, and assurance activities is highly valued.
• Advanced programming skills in Python; familiarity with GitHub, version control methodologies, and CI/CD pipelines. Knowledge of SQL, R, and TypeScript is advantageous.
• Practical experience working with AI coding agents, for example Claude Code and Codex, and developing related components such as sub-agents, hooks, and plugins for workflow automation.
• Ability to critically analyze risks, limitations, monitoring needs, and control effectiveness of agentic AI systems.
• Good understanding of traditional machine learning techniques including regression models, random forests, and XGBoost, with associated evaluation methods.
• Strong grasp of challenges like model limitations, performance decline, validation approaches, and monitoring techniques.
• Experience assessing AI systems relative to governance, risk management, control frameworks including human oversight, explainability, security, resilience, data handling, and lifecycle controls.

Benefits and Company Culture

• One wellbeing leave day per year.
• Up to five additional service bonus leave days annually.
• Paid parental leave up to 20 weeks for primary caregivers, along with transition leaves; six weeks paid leave for non-primary caregivers.
• Two days paid volunteer leave plus donation matching.
• Up to 12 months of gender affirmation leave including six weeks paid.
• Access to Employee Assistance Programs and various wellbeing benefits such as health checks and vaccinations.
• Multiple salary packaging options.
• Wide opportunities for learning and development, including reimbursement for professional memberships and subscriptions.
• Flexible and hybrid working arrangements depending on the role.
• Support for home office setup costs.

About the Risk Management Group

This group serves as an independent centralized function overseeing various material risks across Macquarie, including compliance, credit, financial crime, market, operational, aggregate and prudential risks. The team focuses on managing today’s risks and anticipating tomorrow’s challenges.

Inclusion Commitment

Macquarie is dedicated to fostering an inclusive workplace where diverse experiences, skills, and perspectives are valued without regard to race, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, gender identity or any other characteristic. Reasonable accommodations are provided during recruitment and employment processes upon request.