Principal AI Engineer

Thoughtworks•Toronto, ON

3h•CA$214,000 - CA$344,000•Onsite

About The Position

We are looking for a passionate and skilled AI engineer who is a technical authority at the domain or business unit level. In this role, you will set the direction for how AI engineering is practiced across multiple teams, define reusable patterns and frameworks, and drive adoption of best practices. You will influence technical roadmaps, mentor senior engineers and leads, and ensure our AI solutions are scalable, reliable and aligned with organizational goals. Operating with broad autonomy, you will shape the evolution of AI engineering within your area, while contributing to the wider engineering community.

Requirements

Mastery of Python and software engineering at scale, setting standards for CI/CD, testing, observability and maintainability across teams.
Recognized track record of architecting scalable AI systems and defining reusable frameworks and patterns.
Thought leadership in applying GenAI and agentic frameworks across domains.
Deep expertise in large-scale RAG systems and advanced information retrieval architectures.
Significant experience deploying AI systems across cloud platforms with complex infrastructure, containers and orchestration.
Define organizational standards for LLMOps, monitoring and reliability.
Advanced experience with model customization, fine-tuning and applying ML/NLP frameworks to solve complex problems.
Possesses executive presence with the ability to influence engineering culture and strategy at a company-wide level.
Acts as a trusted advisor to senior leadership, providing expert guidance on technical and strategic decisions.
Recognized as a thought leader in the industry, with a track record of publications, patents or conference presentations.
Proven ability to mentor and develop leaders and experts, building a strong technical pipeline for the organization.

Responsibilities

Set the vision and strategy for AI engineering across teams and projects, ensuring alignment with business goals.
Design and promote scalable frameworks, patterns and standards for building and deploying complex and distributed AI systems.
Anticipate technical and organizational challenges in adopting AI and define approaches to address them.
Uplift the broader engineering community (SMEs and generalists) by driving knowledge sharing, capability building and adoption of AI engineering best practices.
Act as a thought partner to product and business leaders, shaping roadmaps with an understanding of AI opportunities and risks.
Evaluate emerging technologies and approaches, guiding their responsible adoption across the organization.
Provide expert guidance on implementing guardrails at an organizational level.
Provide architectural oversight on complex or high-impact AI initiatives, ensuring they are robust, cost-effective and sustainable.
Represent the organization’s AI engineering expertise in external forums, partnerships or strategic initiatives.
Improve end-to-end GenAI application performance, accuracy and cost, from model training and fine-tuning, to application-level optimization techniques.