Principal AI Engineer
Egen · Remote ·
- Work mode
- Remote
- Seniority
- Principal
- Category
- AI engineering
- Experience
- 10+ years
Egen · Remote ·
iwconnect · Macedonia and Serbia, Macedonia
Guidepoint · Toronto, Ontario, Canada
ecolab · IND - Karnataka - Bangalore - EDC
Ecolab · Bangalore, Karnātaka
As a Principal AI Engineer, you set the technical direction for our most complex Generative AI work — and you are personally hands-on building it. We treat AI as a software engineering discipline, and you are the person who raises that bar: architecting systems that survive contact with production, and elevating the engineers around you to do the same.
You own the hardest problems in our portfolio — agentic platforms operating at scale, foundation-model and applied-ML work, and AI in regulated, high-stakes environments where being wrong is expensive. Document intelligence and RAG pipelines are part of the toolkit, not the ceiling. You take these systems from an ambiguous business problem to a robust, scalable production service, solving for the real-world constraints — latency, reliability, cost, governance — that separate a demo from a system a client can bet on.
You are also the technical face of our engagements. You partner directly with client leadership to translate business strategy into AI architecture, shape solutions in pre-sales, and earn the trust that turns a project into a program. This role blends deep, current mastery of LLMs and ML with the judgment, communication, and consultative instinct of a senior technical leader.
Set technical direction: Own architecture for our most complex GenAI and agentic systems end-to-end, and set the standards — evaluation, observability, responsible AI — that the practice builds to.
Build at the frontier, hands-on: Stay in the code where it matters most — foundation-model and embedding fine-tuning, novel agentic workflows, advanced RAG and semantic search — using Python on Google Cloud (Vertex AI), LangChain/LlamaIndex, and vector search (Vertex AI Vector Search, Pinecone, pgvector).
Engineer for production: Design for latency, reliability, cost, and scale from day one; apply MLOps discipline so systems are served efficiently, monitored, and continuously improved — and actually reach production, where most AI work stalls.
Lead multi-step reasoning at scale: Architect and operate agentic workflows that automate complex reasoning reliably, with the design and verification discipline that keeps multi-agent systems from cascading into failure.
Advise clients and shape deals: Work directly with client leadership to understand strategy, propose state-of-the-art approaches, and shape solutions in pre-sales — the technical authority in the room.
Multiply the team: Elevate senior and mid-level engineers through architecture reviews, mentorship, and setting a high, teachable bar for AI-augmented engineering.
Core Languages: Mastery of Python and shell scripting; fluency across the modern AI engineering stack.
AI/LLM Ecosystem: Deep, current expertise with Google Gemini, GPT-class, and open models (LLaMA); advanced prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and evaluation.
Agentic Systems: Proven experience designing and productionizing agentic and multi-step reasoning systems (MCP, tool use, orchestration) — not just prototypes.
Data & Search: Expertise in vector databases (Vertex AI Vector Search, pgvector, Pinecone) and semantic search at production scale.
Infrastructure: Deep hands-on experience with Google Cloud / Vertex AI and architecting scalable, resilient software systems.
Frameworks: Strong command of LangChain, LlamaIndex, or equivalent orchestration layers — and the judgment to know when not to reach for them.
Engineering foundation: A first-class software engineer — clean, maintainable code, full SDLC ownership, and the architectural judgment to lead others.
Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
10+ years in software / AI / ML engineering, with a substantial track record of AI systems delivered to production at scale.
Demonstrated technical leadership — owning architecture and setting direction across engagements or teams, not just individual deliverables.
Proven track record of deploying GenAI and/or agentic products to production environments.
Experience with classic machine learning (neural nets, training, tuning) strongly preferred; foundation-model or novel-model work a distinct plus.
Strong data engineering and SQL knowledge.
Senior client-facing experience — translating technical complexity into business value for executive stakeholders.
Ownership at scale: You take responsibility not just for your code, but for the outcome of the system and the success of the team building it.
Curiosity: The AI landscape changes weekly; you stay at the frontier and bring the team with you.
Consultative authority: You earn the trust of client leadership and are the calm, credible technical voice in a high-stakes room.
Ethics: You hold the line on responsible AI development and data privacy.
Guidepoint · Toronto, Ontario, Canada