AI Governance Lead

Location: Buffalo, New York, United States of America

Salary: $123,600–$206,000 annual (USD)

Company

M&T Bank is a large financial institution hiring for an enterprise AI governance function.

What you will do

• Design and maintain AI governance standards, policies, and procedures across the lifecycle of AI use cases and models.
• Build intake, classification, value assessment, and control design processes for AI initiatives.
• Establish model risk management practices, including validation, documentation, versioning, approval gates, and performance monitoring.
• Define the target operating model, governance team structure, roles, and RACI across engineering, legal, risk, compliance, and business stakeholders.
• Create a phased implementation roadmap aligned with engineering platform and architecture delivery timelines.
• Establish KPIs, compliance tracking, exception handling, escalation paths, and periodic effectiveness reviews.

Requirements

• Minimum 10 years of combined higher education and/or operational, business analytics, or systems development experience.
• Experience building a governance framework or program from the ground up in a large or complex organization.
• Working knowledge of model risk management practices, such as SR 11-7, and their application to AI/ML systems.
• Experience designing intake, classification, and risk assessment processes for technology or data initiatives.
• Experience collaborating with engineering, legal, compliance, and business teams.
• Bachelor’s degree in risk, business, computer science, law, or a related field, with strong policy writing and executive reporting skills.

Nice to have

• Experience with the EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, or ISO/IEC 42001.
• Experience building or scaling governance teams, including hiring and role design.
• Familiarity with MLOps, model deployment pipelines, and generative AI governance.
• CRISC, CISA, or AI governance-related certifications.
• Experience in financial services, healthcare, insurance, or another regulated industry.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time position with market-informed compensation.
• Governance work spans technical and non-technical stakeholders across the organization.
• Focus on balancing governance rigor with engineering delivery velocity.