Principal Engineer, AI/ML Platform

DoorDash USA•Sunnyvale, CA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

AI/ML Platform at DoorDash is building the foundation for the most advanced AI driven logistics and commerce platform in the world. Our mission is to define the technical backbone that powers all machine learning and generative AI workloads across DoorDash, from marketplace ranking to next generation AI native product experiences. We own the end to end ML lifecycle and evolving GenAI platform capabilities, enabling teams across DoorDash to build and ship high impact experiences for consumers, merchants, and dashers at global scale. As Principal Engineer, you will define the architectural north star for the full ML and GenAI stack and set the long term technical strategy across AI platform teams. You will translate company level AI ambitions into clear architectural direction and cohesive standards spanning distributed training, high performance inference, and generative AI systems. Beyond strategy, you will serve as a technical role model for the organization, setting a high bar for engineering rigor, clarity of thinking, and long term design quality. You will step in to unblock teams, clarify architectural direction, and provide decisive guidance during moments of ambiguity. Success means delivering a cohesive, scalable, and developer friendly AI platform that accelerates research to production velocity and enables AI capabilities across every product line. You must be located in San Francisco, Sunnyvale or Seattle for this hybrid position. You will report directly to the Director of Engineering, Machine Learning.

Requirements

You have 12+ years of experience building and scaling distributed systems and ML infrastructure, with deep expertise in large scale training systems, high throughput inference, and production LLM architectures.
You bring significant hands-on experience with modern LLM systems, including fine tuning, LLM evaluation frameworks, guardrails, and cost efficient model serving at scale.
You have built or architected agentic systems in production, including multi step reasoning pipelines, tool use frameworks, memory systems, and agent platforms.
You can translate company level AI strategy into executable platform architecture, while also diving into code to debug complex distributed systems, model performance bottlenecks, and inference failures.
You have led multi team technical initiatives, influenced senior leadership, and consistently raised the technical standards of organizations operating at global scale.

Responsibilities

Set the long term AI architecture for DoorDash, connecting company level strategy to concrete platform roadmaps and technical execution.
Operate at every altitude, from executive level AI vision and cross org alignment to deep dives into distributed systems performance, training bottlenecks, and production debugging.
Lead the integration of GenAI capabilities including model gateway and routing, fine tuning frameworks, vector infrastructure, RAG pipelines, LLM evaluation systems, guardrails, and agent platform foundations into a unified ML platform.
Raise the engineering bar by mentoring senior engineers, driving architectural rigor, and ensuring reliability, scalability, and cost efficiency at global scale.

Benefits

a 401(k) plan with employer matching
16 weeks of paid parental leave
wellness benefits
commuter benefits match
paid time off and paid sick leave in compliance with applicable laws (e.g. Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act)
medical, dental, and vision benefits
11 paid holidays
disability and basic life insurance
family-forming assistance
a mental health program