Mariah Szarek

IT Director Our direct client, A growing investment firm seeks an experienced IT Director to assess, refine, and elevate their entire technology function. This is a newly created leadership role for a firm that is scaling rapidly, preparing for increased operational and regulatory demands, and viewing technology as a key lever for growth across the business. The successful candidate will be hands-on, highly articulate, and comfortable advising senior leadership. This individual will be both a builder and a doer—while also operating as a technical expert. The IT Director will own the IT function, develop a forward-looking technology “playbook,” and work cross-functionally to drive measurable outcomes across finance, compliance, investment, and operational teams. Responsibilities • Lead key technology initiatives, including onboarding and integration of new platforms and optimization of existing systems, with particular focus on implementation of a firm-wide data warehouse, enabling front-office investment processes, portfolio monitoring, and investor data management. • Ensure technology, processes, and controls align with SEC requirements, investor expectations, and industry best practices; play a key role during fund raising in supporting LP diligence, including drafting and responding to DDQs and participating directly in investor conversations. • Conduct a comprehensive assessment of the current IT environment, including MSP performance, cloud infrastructure, information security programs, data architecture, and application ecosystem; deliver a prioritized roadmap for improvement and remediation. • Lead vendor and product (e.g., CRM, investment management systems, compliance platforms, security tools) evaluations and due diligence, with a focus on scalability, integration, and long-term value. • Review and strengthen cybersecurity programs (MFA, data-loss protection, email security, backup policies, endpoint protection, identity/access management), elevating the firm toward a best-in-class security posture. • Partner closely with firm leadership (including Finance, Portfolio Operations, Legal/Compliance, and Investment teams) to assess needs, prioritize initiatives, and execute solutions across areas such as investor relations, fund accounting, legal entity management, and reporting. Required Experience & Skills • Experience working within a private equity firm is strongly preferred • 10–20+ years of experience in IT, including demonstrated success owning or leading the technology function in a growing organization (80+ users). • Proven experience operating in a build-and-scale environment, assess and create clarity, define a roadmap, align stakeholders, and execute. • Familiarity with RIA/SEC regulatory requirements, investor due diligence processes, and hands-on experience responding to DDQs and supporting fundraising activities. • Experience contributing to or leading data architecture and integration initiatives, including data warehouse design and establishing a “single source of truth.” • Understanding of AI-related workflows and emerging use cases within financial services. • Strong background managing and evaluating MSP providers, including holding vendors accountable and driving improvements beyond standard SOW constraints. • Experience administering and enhancing a cybersecurity program, including Incident response planning, vendor risk management, SOC2 and related control frameworks, pen testing processes, remediation planning, and implementing security controls in regulated environments.

• Hands-on knowledge of common financial-services technologies, such as:

  • Microsoft 365 (SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, Office 365)

  • Microsoft Azure

  • Financial platforms i.e. Netsuite

  • CRM and Deal Pipeline Platforms

  • Data/analytics and investment platforms

  • Compliance platforms

  • Email security tools, Identity /Access Management

• Strong verbal communication skills.  Capable of clearly explaining technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders and influencing senior leadership and investors. • Self-starter with a low-ego, high-impact mindset; able to “figure it out,” bring people along, and operate effectively in a highly collaborative environment.

This role is hybrid on-site, 3-4 days per week, in the Midtown Manhattan office.  

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Vice President, AI Engineer -  Full Time - Hybrid About the Role Our client, a leading NYC fintech firm, is hiring a VP, AI Engineer to lead the design and delivery of production-grade AI systems that drive measurable business outcomes. This is a hands-on technical leadership role for a seasoned engineer who has shipped complex AI systems end-to-end and can translate ambiguous business needs into well-scoped solutions. You will own key workstreams, set technical direction, mentor engineers, and partner directly with business stakeholders to ensure AI capabilities meet production standards for reliability, scalability, and measurability. What You'll Do

• Lead the architecture and delivery of production AI systems;  document intelligence (IDP), knowledge systems and agentic orchestration.
• Own AI projects end-to-end: scoping, stakeholder alignment, design, deployment, monitoring and continuous improvement.
• Drive technical and architectural decisions (API design, system decomposition, evaluation strategy, infrastructure) that raise the quality bar across the platform.
• Build robust evaluation frameworks - statistically sound metrics, benchmark datasets and strict versioning for reproducibility and continuous improvement.
• Partner with Operations, Legal, Product and Business teams to identify opportunities and communicate tradeoffs and mentor engineers through code and design review.

What You'll Bring — Required

• 7+ years building production AI/ML systems, including AWS or cloud-native patterns for AI/ML workloads.
• Strong Python and software engineering best practices (source control, CI/CD, testing, documentation).
• Deep expertise in at least one of: LLM-based systems (fine-tuning, inference optimization, prompt engineering, transformers/vLLM/agentic frameworks); document intelligence/IDP; or ML system design (training pipelines, model serving, evaluation infrastructure).
• Experience operating end-to-end ML pipelines in production (MLOps).
• Solid fundamentals in statistics, experimentation, and data quality, with rigorous reasoning about metrics and the limits of AI systems.
• Track record leading technical design, mentoring engineers, and driving architectural decisions within a team.
• Strong written and verbal communication across technical and non-technical audiences.

Preferred

• Familiarity with agentic architectures and protocols (e.g., MCP, A2A) or multi-step, tool-using workflows.
• LLM cost and latency optimization at scale (quantization, batching, model routing).
• Financial services or FinTech experience, particularly in document-heavy or compliance-sensitive domains.
• Open-source contributions or published technical writing in applied AI.

Compensation

• Base salary $170,000–$200,000 plus bonus and equity.
• Hybrid schedule: in office Monday–Thursday with the flexibility to work remotely on Friday.

By applying for this job, you agree to receive calls, AI-generated calls, text messages, or emails from Benchmark IT, LLC and its affiliates, and contracted partners. Frequency varies for text messages. Message and data rates may apply. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages. You can reply STOP to cancel and HELP for help. You can access our privacy policy here:https://bmarkits.com/privacy-policy/

Our direct client, based in White Plains, NY, is seeking an AI-forward Technical Lead who leverages cutting-edge AI tools to transform software development processes. This is a long-term contract position (12-36+ months) with likely extension beyond. This role is a hybrid on-site position and you will be required to work on-site 4 days per week in White Plains, NY.

In this role, the Java Tech Lead will champion the integration of AI into every aspect of the development lifecycle while maintaining responsibility for the overall design, implementation and quality of the code the team produces across one or more projects. You will be expected to proactively identify opportunities to enhance development efficiency, code quality, and team productivity through AI tools and processes. You will partner with IT leadership, architecture, and development staff to establish AI-enhanced vision, strategy and road maps that align with business strategies and organizational priorities. You must collaborate with peers and leadership to leverage AI-driven knowledge and solutions across the organization.

This position is within a development group focused on leading the delivery of best-in-class systems to support client's business lines, across all channels. These include customer and internal applications built on AWS using Microservices Architecture and other AWS components that integrate with existing on-prem systems and databases.

Organizational Relationships:

The Technical Lead reports to the Director of Development and is accountable for daily status on tech design, development, and resource management. The Lead will collaborate with team members to define requirements, design, and develop mission critical applications while continuously exploring and implementing AI-enhanced workflows.

The Technical Lead works with:

• Delivery leads to staff projects with associates, contractors, and/or third party teams
• Project managers on a plan and estimates
• Architecture and delivery leads on solution blueprints
• QA and delivery leads on functional testing, integration testing, performance testing and to triage defects
• Service introduction on hand-off to application operations team

Qualifications:

• Proven experience utilizing AI tools for Java software development including code generation, review, documentation, testing, and debugging (e.g., Amazon Q, GitHub Copilot, or similar platforms)
• Proactive, self-directed mindset for identifying and implementing AI-driven process improvements without waiting for top-down directives
• Strong prompt engineering skills and commitment to continuous exploration of emerging AI tools to enhance development workflows
• 8+ years experience in Java backend development demonstrating increasing levels of responsibility
• Experience leading a team of 3 or more software developers and mentoring them in AI-enhanced development practices
• Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent experience
• Experience producing solution designs for large-scale, highly available, mission-critical systems
• Proficient in designing, creating and consuming Web Services (REST, JSON, OAuth), multi-tier or microservice applications in Java and large scale database applications
• Strong experience in SQL and data modeling
• Demonstrate sound architecture skills and broad experience designing applications
• Ability to communicate complex technical design concepts and translate into non-technical business solutions
• Able to communicate well with all levels in the organization, and must be comfortable as a primary contact to internal and external customers
• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Experience in Agile, Waterfall and other software development methodologies

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with developing within a Cloud environment with good knowledge of cloud infrastructure like AWS is a plus
• Hands-on experience with Amazon Q and Hero (current company AI tools)
• Python scripting experience
• Angular experience strongly preferred for any frontend development needs
• Experience with ecommerce, retail, and financing is a plus

To ensure a fair and secure hiring process, candidates must complete live video interviews with cameras on and present valid government-issued identification during the process. All interviews are conducted directly with our internal team - proxy interviewing is not permitted.

Apply today for immediate consideration! This is immediate, interview and hire.

By applying for this job, you agree to receive calls, AI-generated calls, text messages, or emails from Benchmark IT, LLC and its affiliates, and contracted partners. Frequency varies for text messages. Message and data rates may apply. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages. You can reply STOP to cancel and HELP for help. You can access our privacy policy here: https://bmarkits.com/privacy-policy/

Our direct client, based in White Plains, NY, is seeking a Senior Java Developer who embraces AI-augmented development practices. You will be a part of the transformational journey to deliver best in class systems to support company's business lines, across all channels. The Senior Developer is to collaboratively drive the development and support of client's critical business systems for internal and external systems, while leveraging AI tools to enhance productivity and code quality. This role requires deep technical knowledge of high volume and highly transactional systems. Hybrid working model, 4 days per week on site is expected. Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with Product Owners, QA, PMO, DevOps and other developers to define requirements, design, and develop mission critical applications
• Utilize AI development tools to enhance coding efficiency, code review, testing, and documentation processes
• Analyze, design and develop application solutions and enhancements that meet requirements
• Ensure adherence to programming and enterprise architectural standards
• Complete work assignments and perform appropriate follow up to ensure that tasks are completed on time
• Collaborate with product owners, application users, creative team and other developers to define requirements, design, and develop the web application
• Assist in the rollout of new applications, problem fixes, and enhancements of software
• Work alongside AI-enthusiastic technical leads to continuously improve development workflows

Qualifications:

• Undergraduate degree in computer science, engineering or similar field (or equivalent experience)
• 5+ years programming with Java (backend development focus), JEE, Web Services
• Experience with webservice/API development using Java-based enterprise technologies and tools using Java 8 and above, Microservices architecture, Spring and REST
• Must be able to code in prevailing technologies including Java, Spring, SQL including conceptual knowledge with cloud native solutions from AWS
• Proven abilities delivering code with CI/CD development methodologies
• Experience with modern development tools (ideally Eclipse/Intellij, Git, Maven, CI servers, Azure DevOps (or other tools), code review tools)
• Knowledge of Domain-Driven Design concepts and designing and developing Microservices using the Spring ecosystem
• Knowledge of developing Spring Data access application with AWS RDS or NoSQL data stores
• Conceptual Experience with API design and implementation
• Conceptual Knowledge with container orchestrators and container engines (Docker, AWS ECS)
• Analytical, problem-solving mindset
• Self-driven with minimal supervision
• Experience working on a production-critical system
• Openness to learning and integrating AI tools into development workflow

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience augmenting development with AI tools (e.g., Amazon Q, GitHub Copilot, or similar platforms) for code generation, review, and optimization
• Experience with developing within a Cloud environment with good knowledge of cloud infrastructure like AWS is a plus
• Python scripting experience
• Angular experience strongly preferred for any frontend development needs
• Experience with ecommerce, retail, and financing is a plus

Apply today for immediate consideration! This is an immediate interview and hire opportunity, and an on-site interview at the White Plains, NY office will be required.

By applying for this job, you agree to receive calls, AI-generated calls, text messages, or emails from Benchmark IT, LLC and its affiliates, and contracted partners. Frequency varies for text messages. Message and data rates may apply. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages. You can reply STOP to cancel and HELP for help. You can access our privacy policy here: https://bmarkits.com/privacy-policy/

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Developer - Consultant  For our direct client in the the B-to-C / hospitality industry, we seek an experienced SalesForce Marketing Cloud developer to join their team for a 12-mo+ contract, to bring their SFMC experience to the company to help them achieve great results from the platform.  This is a remote position in the US, working on East Coast Hours.   Our client is looking to start right away -  apply today for an immediate interview for this position!  

POSITION SUMMARY:

The Sales Force Marketing Cloud Developer serves as the subject matter expert for the Marketing team and is responsible for providing the technical implementation and guidance to enable the team to achieve measurable marketing results using the platform. This dedicated role will fill a critical need, providing deep technical expertise to build, test, optimize, and maintain marketing-initiated projects across the platform. The ideal candidate is a self-motivated, highly technical professional who thrives in a collaborative environment. They will possess a broad understanding of both front-end and back-end technologies, the ability to integrate complex data systems, and the creativity to deliver innovative marketing journeys. This role is an exciting opportunity for an expert to drive forward critical marketing automation initiatives and serve as our client's technical expert on Salesforce Marketing Cloud, optimizing platform use across the creative, brand, and database teams. Build, test, and maintain scalable, high-performance marketing automations and communications.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Manage data integration, structure, and modeling to enable highly personalized marketing campaigns. Integrate external data sources into SFMC using REST and SOAP APIs; set up data structures; perform data modeling; support large-scale data extraction and management

• Develop and maintain high-performing email journey automations that leverage personalization, dynamic content, and A/B testing within SFMC

• Collaborate cross-functionally with Brand, Creative, IT, and data analysts to support and execute marketing strategies through advanced technical implementations

• Develop dynamic content and advanced logic using HTML, CSS, AMPscript, SQL, and SSJS. Build custom automations, develop custom Cloud Pages, and enhance out-of-the-box functionality within SFMC

• Lead various technical responsibilities such as platform implementation, system integrations, data imports, and cross-platform synchronization

• Conduct QA testing, troubleshoot issues, and optimize performance for marketing programs, ensuring best-in-class user experiences and data integrity

• Collaborate with designers using Figma to translate visual designs into responsive HTML/CSS implementations, ensuring brand consistency across digital experiences

SKILLS & QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Marketing Technology, or a related field

• 5+ years of experience in back-end development and marketing technology, with strong front-end skills

• Deep expertise with Salesforce Marketing Cloud (Journey Builder, Automation Studio, Personalization, Contact Builder, Email Studio, Pop-Ups)

• Advanced proficiency in HTML, CSS, Javascript/Typescript AMPscript, SQL, SSJS

• Experience integrating SFMC with various data systems; eCommerce marketing experience is a plus

• Required experience with CMS platforms, Sitecore being a plus

• Experience collaborating with designers and stakeholders using Figma

• Outstanding problem-solving skills with a proactive, self-starter attitude

• Ability to balance independent execution with collaborative teamwork

• Excellent organizational, communication, and project management skills

• Entrepreneurial spirit with ability to adapt to changing business needs

This position is fully remote; however, occasional travel to the company’s Connecticut office will be required for team meetings and business needs. Candidates must be comfortable working a schedule that aligns with Eastern Time business hours.  

By applying for this job, you agree to receive calls, AI-generated calls, text messages, or emails from Benchmark IT, LLC and its affiliates, and contracted partners. Frequency varies for text messages. Message and data rates may apply. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages. You can reply STOP to cancel and HELP for help. You can access our privacy policy here:https://bmarkits.com/privacy-policy/