Principal AI Platform Engineer

PEMCO•Seattle, WA

19h

About The Position

PEMCO is seeking a Principal AI Platform Engineer to join their community. As AI agents become mission-critical in production business workflows, PEMCO needs a leader who owns the operational reliability, governance, security, and cost management of the AI layer. In year one, this is a hands-on technical leadership role where you will build systems yourself while establishing the standards and governance framework. As AI operations mature, you will build and scale a team to match operational demands. The role spans both business AI use cases (in partnership with the Data, AI & Digital teams) and technology enablement use cases including IT operations, information security, help desk automation. You will be responsible for building and maintaining the enterprise agent marketplace, establishing production-grade observability, and ensuring governance and compliance across all AI deployments.

Requirements

Technical degree or equivalent practical experience.
5+ years in a technical operations, platform engineering, or SRE leadership role is required
2+ years building and deploying AI agents in production environments, including AI/ML ops (model monitoring, feature store management, RAG, vector store enablement) is required
Experience with cloud AI services (Azure OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, or comparable) is required
Experience building observability and monitoring for production services is required
Experience with identity and access management for technical platforms is required
Demonstrated understanding of AI security risks: prompt injection, data leakage, model abuse is required
Experience leading or building a technical team is required
MS Office: Skilled proficiency in Excel, Word, Outlook
Leadership & Managing Others: Establishes and communicates a compelling and inspiring vision, creates winning strategies and plans, ensures team goals are aligned with company goals; develops both self and others is required.

Nice To Haves

Experience with agent orchestration frameworks (MCP, LangChain, CrewAI, AutoGen, or similar)
Experience with LLM operational patterns: token management, caching, rate limiting, fallback strategies
Experience in a regulated industry (financial services, insurance, healthcare)
Experience with cost optimization for cloud AI consumption
Familiarity with AI governance frameworks (NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, or internal frameworks)
Experience building or operating an internal AI agent marketplace or enterprise AI access layer
Cloud platform certifications preferred (Azure, AWS, or GCP)
AI/ML certifications preferred but not required
Job Specific: Translates between data teams and infrastructure teams. Comfortable in both conversations.
Job Specific: Comfortable operating in startup mode within an established organization. Delivers value incrementally while building toward a mature platform.
Interpersonal Skills & Empathy: Builds relationships and gets results through influence rather than authority.
Independent: Is highly self-motivated and self-directed. The ability to work with limited direction and communicate relevant information to the appropriate levels during times of uncertainty
Precision: Is detail orientated and has a strong desire for accuracy and thoroughness
Communicator: The ability to communicate clearly and informatively, verbally and in writing, with colleagues, customers, and the community in both technical and non-technical professional language

Responsibilities

Own the operational lifecycle of AI agents deployed across PEMCO: deployment, monitoring, scaling, incident response, and retirement.
Build and maintain observability for the AI layer, including cost tracking, latency, error rates, model performance, token usage, and production monitoring for agent workers.
Manage agent orchestration infrastructure, including configuration, versioning, connection management, and tool registration. Current stack includes MCP-based orchestration and Azure OpenAI services.
Establish runbooks and incident response procedures for AI agent failures. When an agent supporting a business workflow goes down, this role owns the recovery.
Implement prompt governance controls and role-based model access per Information Security standards: PII exposure monitoring, prompt injection detection, and access enforcement. Contribute requirements and technical capabilities to InfoSec for AI-specific policy development.
Build the enterprise agent marketplace: deploy and manage AI agents within an enterprise UI framework, ensuring discoverability, versioning, and access controls.
Evaluate new model releases, track capability evolution, and make recommendations on model selection. Maintain a knowledge management layer for AI operations including decision logs, model inventories, and governance documentation.
Contribute directly to AI governance and the AI Governance Working Group. Operationalize security, governance, and compliance standards defined by Information Security and Data & AI leadership across all AI deployments.
Optimize AI infrastructure costs through model selection, caching strategies, batching, and token budget management.
Partner with the Data & AI team on production readiness for models and agents. Data & AI owns model development, training, and AI governance policy. This role owns the operational deployment, monitoring, fallback behavior, graceful degradation, and knowledge layer integration.
As the function matures, define team structure, secure headcount, and build a team.
Demonstrate behaviors consistent with PEMCO's policies, values, code of ethics, and business conduct.
Authentically support the PEMCO Brand and constantly are on the lookout for top talent to join us to achieve our Mission to Worry Less and Live More.
Other duties as assigned.

Benefits

Medical, dental, and vision plans for employees and eligible family members with generous employer premium cost shares.
Employer-paid basic life and accidental death & dismemberment insurance policies.
Long- and short-term disability benefit coverages.
401(k) plan with a generous employer match (2 for 1 on the first 6% employee pre-tax and/or Roth deferral, up to federal maximums).
Vacation accrual starting at a minimum of 10 days for new hires, increasing with tenure.
Four (4) floating holidays immediately upon hire.
Paid holidays for the eight (8) observed holidays.
Up to ten (10) days of sick leave immediately upon hire.
Paid time off for bereavement, jury duty, and employee volunteering.
Flexible Spending Accounts.
Education Assistance Program after one year of service.
Scholarship program for children of PEMCO employees after one year of service.
Employee Assistance Program.
Well-being program.
Discretionary taxable gifts and gift cards.
Other Perks & Benefits, including discounts on computer software and hardware, cell phone plans, and rental cars.
Discretionary bonuses.
Tiered sales commissions and/or incentives (from 5-25% of employee’s monthly sales).
Employee referral bonuses.
Shift differential pay.