Principal AI Engineer - Aerospace & Defense

IFS•Itasca, IL

11d•Hybrid

About The Position

Our Aerospace & Defense business helps the world's leading airlines, MROs, OEMs and defense operators keep complex fleets and platforms mission-ready — managing the full maintenance, asset and service lifecycle at scale. We are reimagining how that software is built and delivered around AI, and we are investing in engineers who can put AI to work both inside our products and in how we build them. You operate forward deployed — working shoulder-to-shoulder with A&D customers in their own environments — to ship AI-powered mobile capabilities that connect IFS to the systems that run their operations. This is a Principal-level role: you are the person others build toward, setting technical direction across product groups, carrying deep expertise in Applied AI and Forward Deployed Engineering, and taking end-to-end ownership with a you-build-it, you-run-it mindset — from design and development through testing, deployment and operational reliability in the field.

Requirements

Demonstrated, hands-on experience leveraging AI for building products — using AI-assisted and agentic development tooling as a core part of your workflow — and for building AI within products — shipping production AI capabilities using ML integration, prompt engineering, RAG, agentic architectures, evaluation and testing, and MLOps.
Mobile engineering: a proven track record building and shipping production mobile applications, with the depth to set the technical direction for a mobile product. Native iOS development experience is strongly preferred given this role's focus on our next-generation aviation-maintenance mobility solution.
Principal-level impact: a proven track record as a recognised technical authority who drives strategy and delivery across multiple teams or product groups, with the depth to operate as a role model in the most complex, large-scope work.
Forward-deployed strength: substantial experience deploying, integrating and operating enterprise software directly in customer environments, including integration with ERP, CRM, IoT and legacy systems, and owning solution architecture in customer context.
Full-lifecycle engineering: strong foundations across the delivery lifecycle — design and development, quality and testing, cloud and DevOps, and security — with proficiency in modern general-purpose programming languages beyond any single domain framework.
Leadership and ownership: end-to-end ownership with a you-build-it, you-run-it mindset, excellent communication with technical and non-technical audiences, and a track record of growing the capability of the engineers and teams around you.

Nice To Haves

Experience working in or with Aerospace & Defense organisations, or on solutions for asset, maintenance, MRO or fleet-readiness management.
Experience with other enterprise asset management (EAM), field service or maintenance-management solutions.
Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Experience of agile delivery and of working with globally distributed teams.

Responsibilities

Shape our next-generation mobility solution. Help define and deliver the next-generation mobile experience for aviation maintenance — a fast, reliable, field-ready product that engineers trust to do their most critical work, including where connectivity is constrained.
Build AI into the product. Design and ship AI-powered product capabilities — model integration, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), agentic architectures and the evaluation harnesses and MLOps that keep them reliable in production. You build AI systems, not just use them.
Use AI to build the product. Treat AI-assisted development and agentic tooling as core engineering capability. You raise the bar for how the team builds — measurably faster and better — and set the standard others adopt.
Deploy forward. Embed with Aerospace & Defense customers to deploy, integrate and harden solutions in their environment. You connect IFS to the systems that run their business — ERP, CRM, IoT, telemetry, and legacy and mission systems — and own the solution architecture in real customer context, under real-world constraints.
Own delivery end to end. Design, develop, test, deploy and operate across the full stack in modern general-purpose languages. You own quality through automated testing, manage delivery through CI/CD, and ensure operational reliability in cloud, edge and mobile environments.
Lead as a Principal. Drive technical strategy across product groups, make the architecture and shipping-quality calls others defer, mentor engineers, and lift the AI and forward-deployment practice of the wider organisation. Represent IFS credibly in front of customers and partners.
Anchor to the customer. Ground technical decisions in direct customer evidence and business value. You understand the A&D domain deeply enough to know which problems are worth solving and how AI changes the answer.