Principal Architect, AI-Native Developer Experience

BambooHR • Oklahoma, FL

1d • Remote

About The Position

The Principal Architect for AI-Native Developer Experience will lead the architecture for how BambooHR engineers and AI agents build software together. The role defines the tools, context, practices, and pipelines that help agents participate in software development, while remaining a hands-on contributor who experiments with emerging technologies, builds production code, and helps teams adopt effective patterns.

The architect will set the technical vision, reference architecture, and roadmap for AI-native development; establish practices for working with coding agents; and design agentic workflows across the software development lifecycle. The role also builds engineering and product knowledge layers, helps teams make their domains agent-ready, modernizes CI/CD and developer experience, and partners with Security, Privacy, and Quality Engineering on governance, permissions, sandboxing, audit trails, cost, and quality. The position includes influencing technical direction across teams and mentoring engineers.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• At least 10 years of software engineering experience, including at least 7 years in software architecture or staff-plus technical leadership.
• Daily hands-on use of AI coding agents and a track record of turning that experience into practices or tools adopted by other engineers.
• Experience building production LLM systems, including tool calling, agent orchestration, context engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and evaluations.
• Deep experience designing CI/CD, build systems, and developer platforms at scale.
• Strong SaaS architecture fundamentals and fluency in PHP, React, and MySQL.
• Working knowledge of the OWASP Top 10, including for LLM applications, and supply chain security.
• A record of influencing architects and senior engineers without direct authority.
• Sound judgment in ambiguous problem spaces and exceptional communication, including the ability to give and receive direct feedback.

Nice To Haves

• Experience building agent tooling, MCP servers, or open-source developer tools.
• Experience leading AI adoption or productivity change across a large engineering organization.
• Experience building systems that handle sensitive data in regulated SaaS, such as HR, payroll, or SOC 2 environments.

Responsibilities

• Define the technical vision, reference architecture, and incremental roadmap for AI-native development, and document key decisions in architecture decision records.
• Track emerging models, agents, and developer tools; run time-boxed experiments and proofs of concept; establish successful approaches as supported patterns and retire ineffective ones.
• Define and promote practices for engineers working with coding agents, including spec-driven development, context engineering, and review of agent-generated code.
• Build a shared library of agent skills, tools, and MCP servers, and promote practices through demonstrations, playbooks, and communities of practice.
• Architect agentic workflows across triage, implementation, review, testing, and remediation, with risk-based autonomy levels, human-in-the-loop guardrails, and evaluations.
• Build engineering and product knowledge layers for accurate, current context, including code intelligence, service catalogs, architecture records, domain models, and business rules.
• Define standards for agent-ready domains and help teams address gaps in boundaries, documented APIs, agent-callable tools, fast tests, and ephemeral environments.
• Redesign CI/CD pipelines for agent-authored changes, including intelligent test selection, merge queues, automated quality and security gates, and progressive delivery.
• Modernize development environments, onboarding, documentation, and the internal developer portal for engineers and agents, and measure developer experience and productivity.
• Partner with Security, Privacy, and Quality Engineering on agent permissions, sandboxing, and audit trails; track AI cost and quality.
• Write production code and reference implementations, partner with architects and staff engineers to set direction and deliver changes, and mentor engineers in agentic skills.

Benefits

• Comprehensive health, life, and disability insurance.
• Four weeks of vacation, 12 company holidays, parental leave, and volunteer time off.
• 401(k) plan with up to 6% company match.
• $2,000 Paid-Paid Vacation bonus.
• Employee assistance program through Headspace.
• Professional development and flexible work arrangements.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal