Principal Engineer - AI and Intelligence Systems

WISEcode

5d

About The Position

At WISEcode, we're a well-funded, dynamic startup. WISEcode makes personalized nutrition a reality based on the facts – what truly is in our food — and marries this data with your preferences. Powered by AI and the world’s best food and nutrition database, WISEcode embraces the fact that we are all different, have different dietary needs, objectives, and preferences, and should not be at the mercy of market spin or “expert” opinion. Every one of us should have the information we need to make the best decisions for ourselves. The Opportunity WISEcode doesn’t hire for incremental impact — we hire for force multipliers. Our Principal Engineers are restless builders who transform complexity into clarity, elevate every team they touch, and create architecture that accelerates the entire company. These are strategic technologists who see systems where others see fragments, who bring long-term thinking into every decision, and who translate bold ideas into elegant, scalable solutions that endure beyond their original use cases. About the Role The Principal Engineer (PE) is WISEcode’s highest-impact individual-contributor role — a technical leader who combines deep hands-on engineering with clear architectural ownership and accountability across major parts of the platform. PEs write excellent code, but also define system boundaries, long-term technical direction, and engineering standards that influence the entire organization over time. While this Principal Engineer role operates at a platform and systems level, this position is anchored in WISEcode’s AI, intelligence, and reasoning layers and requires deep, opinionated expertise in designing systems that combine probabilistic intelligence with deterministic software foundations. A WISEcode PE is both strategist and builder. You will: Translate product ideas, domain concepts, and company vision into intelligent systems that reason over food, ingredients, nutrition, and user preferences. Design and implement AI-powered features end-to-end, including model selection, orchestration, inference pipelines, confidence handling, and integration with product workflows. Guide teams through decisions on model tradeoffs, data quality, evaluation strategies, observability, explainability, and long-term system evolution. Influence without authority — shaping engineering culture, mentoring senior engineers, and raising the organizational bar for how intelligence is built and trusted. PEs at WISEcode operate as a flexible, high-impact bench. You may embed temporarily into a product, data, or platform team to accelerate an AI-heavy initiative, resolve architectural ambiguity, or establish a new intelligence capability. You’ll then step out, leaving behind reusable patterns, clear interfaces, and higher organizational confidence in intelligent systems. Because of their breadth, PEs typically work closely with the CTO and maintain visibility across products, data systems, and infrastructure. Your success is measured not by individual model performance alone, but by the reliability, interpretability, and usefulness of intelligence across the entire WISEcode ecosystem. How Principal Engineers Operate at WISEcode Systems thinkers with depth. PEs bring T-shaped skills: deep expertise in AI systems, model integration, and intelligent workflows, combined with broad understanding across data modeling, software architecture, product experience, and infrastructure. Architects who execute. You can design an inference pipeline, integrate LLMs or ML models into production systems, implement evaluation and monitoring loops, and understand how these components must evolve over time as data, models, and use cases change. Product-savvy technologists. PEs help shape product direction, not just implement requirements. You anticipate how intelligent behavior affects user trust, explainability, personalization, and long-term product differentiation, and help frame product decisions through technical clarity. Pragmatic long-term thinkers. You balance speed of experimentation with architectural integrity. You know when probabilistic systems are appropriate and when deterministic computation is required. Multipliers. You leave teams stronger: clearer intelligence patterns, better evaluation practices, safer AI usage, and faster future delivery that does not depend on your constant involvement. AI Skills and Leadership • WISEcode is an AI-native company. Every engineer is expected to use AI well, but PEs set the standard. You will: • Design AI systems that combine LLMs, traditional ML, rules, and deterministic logic into coherent, testable workflows • Establish practices for evaluation, monitoring, and iteration that make intelligent systems reliable and trustworthy over time. • Understand how data quality, prompt design, retrieval strategies, and system architecture affect model behavior • Advocate for responsible, transparent, and explainable AI that aligns with WISEcode’s mission of consumer trust and empowerment. AI is not a bolt-on at WISEcode — it is a horizontal capability. PEs ensure intelligence is embedded thoughtfully into products, workflows, and decision-making without sacrificing correctness or clarity.

Requirements

• BSCS or equivalent engineering degree
• 12+ years of strong professional development experience
• Demonstrated ownership of production AI or intelligence systems whose behavior, reliability, and evolution you were personally responsible for over time
• Strong software engineering background with experience integrating AI or ML into real-world systems
• Experience working with LLMs, ML models, or hybrid intelligence approaches in production environments
• Ability to reason about probabilistic systems, evaluation metrics, and tradeoffs between accuracy, cost, and user trust
• Track record of technical leadership, mentoring, and cross-team influence as an individual contributor
• Ability to operate independently, set direction, and drive execution in ambiguous or exploratory contexts
• Broad systems thinking with depth in AI, data, and software architecture
• Startup mindset — adaptability, urgency, pragmatism, and comfort shifting between experimentation and production delivery

Responsibilities

• Own architecture for AI and intelligence systems across model integration, inference pipelines, evaluation frameworks, and product interfaces.
• Lead solution design for high-complexity, AI-driven initiatives and deliver production-ready implementations when needed.
• Define patterns and standards for safe, observable, and explainable AI usage across teams
• Diagnose and resolve issues across data inputs, model behavior, system integration, and user-facing outcomes.
• Guide decisions on model selection, orchestration, cost-performance tradeoffs, and system scalability.
• Mentor senior engineers and elevate engineering culture around intelligent system design
• Partner closely with product, data, CTO, and platform teams to shape roadmap feasibility and long-term intelligence strategy.
• Apply AI techniques in ways that improve personalization, understanding, automation, and developer productivity.

Benefits

• Medical
• Dental
• Vision
• 401(k)
• and other ancillary benefits offerings, along with Paid Time Off for vacation, illness, and other types of leave.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 11-50 employees