Principal AI Engineer

The Hartford•Columbus, OH

4d•$145,440 - $218,160•Hybrid

About The Position

We’re determined to make a difference and are proud to be an insurance company that goes well beyond coverages and policies. Working here means having every opportunity to achieve your goals – and to help others accomplish theirs, too. Join our team as we help shape the future. At the Hartford, we are seeking a Principal AI Engineer who is responsible for building our AI platform to accelerate designing, developing, and deploying AI use cases, and drive innovation at scale, with particular emphasis on GenAI capabilities and acceleration of use cases. We are driven by a strong determination to create a meaningful impact and take pride in being an insurance company that extends far beyond the realms of policies and coverages. When you choose to be a part of our team, you open the door to endless opportunities for personal and professional growth, as well as the chance to empower others in reaching their aspirations. You will help bring the transformative power of AI/GenAI capabilities to re-imagine the ‘art of possible’ and serve our internal customers and transform the businesses. This team is dedicated to building state-of-the-art AI platform. We are looking for an experienced Principal AI Engineer, to help us build the foundation of our AI capability. You will be a thought partner to the platform leadership. You will provide vision and impeccably execute the build of platform capabilities that accelerates the build of complex digital assistants, enables rapid experimentation, supports scaling and productionization of the solutions with built in scalability, security and self-service features. The ideal candidate is an accomplished professional with significant hands-on experience in data, analytics, MLOps/LLMOps engineering who is equipped to manage and drive broader stakeholder engagements. This role requires versatility and expertise across a wide range of skills. Someone who is biased for action, visionary and an engineer at heart will fit into this role seamlessly.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a technical field.
10+ years of experience with cloud (AWS / GCP)
Demonstrate a willingness to challenge the status quo and a bias for action
Extensive programming experience with Python, Typescript.
At least 8 years of experience designing and building data-intensive solutions using distributed computing.
10+ years building and shipping software and/or platform infrastructure solutions for enterprises.
Hands-on experience with cloud platforms and services, such as Google Cloud, AWS, Azure and their offerings for AI / generative AI
Experience with CI/CD pipelines, Automated Testing, Automated Deployments, Agile methodologies, Unit Testing and Integration Testing tools.
Experience with building scalable serverless application (real-time / batch)
Knowledge of distributed NoSQL database systems.
Candidate must be authorized to work in the US without company sponsorship. The company will not support the STEM OPT I-983 Training Plan endorsement for this position.
Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to work in a collaborative team environment.
Excellent communication skills.

Nice To Haves

Experience with data engineering, ETL technology, and conversation UX is a plus.
Experience with HPCs, vector embedding, and Hybrid/Semantic search technologies.
Proficiency in customization techniques across various stages of the RAG pipeline, including model fine-tuning, retrieval re-ranking, Hybrid search and multimodal RAG plus.
Strong proficiency in embeddings, ANN/KNN, vector stores, quantization, database optimization, & performance tuning.
Experience in building Agentic system using frameworks like LangGraph and crewai is a plus.
Basic understanding of Natural Language Processing, vector space models and Deep Learning.

Responsibilities

Key thought leader, collaborator, and contributor to the build of the AI platform that supports and accelerated GenAI and traditional predictive and ML solutions.
Define and execute the vision and roadmap for AI platform that align with the organization's strategic goals and customer needs.
Drive the future state of the AI platform by staying updated with the latest trends and developments
Lead the build and execution of POCs and prototypes that serve to qualify and validate emerging AI platform solutions that can be leveraged as solution quick start and eventually become capabilities within the AI platform for enterprise consumption.
Provide hands_on engineering support to the build of platform capabilities e.g., agentic frameworks, IAC, production grade capabilities, monitoring systems, developer experience, FinOps capabilities etc
Partner with our shared service teams like Architecture, Cloud, Security, etc to design and implement platform solutions.
Collaborate with the DS team to develop a self-service internal developer AI platform.
Provide leadership and mentorship to engineers on the team, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous upskilling and learning.