Principal Engineer I - AI Engineering

Western Alliance Bank • Phoenix, AZ

3d

About The Position

The Principal Engineer I - AI Engineering serves as the enterprise technical owner and strategic engineering lead for GitHub Copilot and agentic software engineering capabilities. The role provides subject-matter expertise and technical direction for the architecture, configuration, integration, governance, lifecycle, and evolution of enterprise solutions, ensuring they are secure, compliant, reliable, and supportable.

The position defines and evolves the technical vision, architecture, engineering patterns, governance, and capabilities of the enterprise Agentic SDLC Harness, including reusable agents, skills, instructions, rules, plugins, MCP integrations, and other AI-assisted engineering capabilities. It partners with Development, Architecture, DevOps, Quality Engineering, Security, Cloud, Governance, platform owners, project sponsors, and technology leaders to refine requirements, assess approaches, and take solutions from concept through enterprise adoption.

The role provides technical leadership across organizational boundaries, influences engineering standards and architectural decisions, communicates complex concepts to engineering and leadership audiences, and mentors engineers. It requires expertise in GitHub Copilot, agentic software engineering, modern software development, GitHub Enterprise, Azure DevOps, DevOps and platform engineering, CI/CD, APIs and integrations, development frameworks, identity and access, and secure software delivery.

Requirements

• At least 8 years of progressive software engineering, platform engineering, DevOps, developer enablement, or related IT experience, including at least 5 years designing, engineering, administering, or supporting enterprise development platforms.
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, information technology, engineering, system analysis, or a related field.
• Deep understanding of modern software engineering practices, SDLC processes, source control, CI/CD, developer tooling, and platform engineering.
• Hands-on experience engineering, administering, and supporting enterprise development platforms, including GitHub Enterprise and preferably Azure DevOps; experience should include repository governance, identity and access, integrations, policies, CI/CD, and developer tooling.
• Demonstrated hands-on experience with GitHub Copilot and AI-assisted software engineering, including enterprise configuration, agentic capabilities, customization, integration, governance, and developer enablement.
• Experience architecting enterprise developer platforms and developer enablement ecosystems, including reusable frameworks, integrations, automation, engineering patterns, and shared platform capabilities.
• Strong understanding of generative AI and agentic architectures, including AI agents, tool calling, agent orchestration, prompt engineering, context engineering, retrieval patterns, human-in-the-loop controls, and secure enterprise integrations.
• Experience designing security and governance controls for AI-assisted engineering, including identity and access, least-privilege tool access, secrets and sensitive-data protection, repository permissions, third-party integrations, MCP servers, and agent/tool execution boundaries.
• Software engineering experience and ability to design, build, test, and maintain automation, integrations, developer tooling, APIs, scripts, and reusable engineering components.
• Ability to translate emerging technologies into secure, scalable, supportable enterprise solutions.
• Ability to work effectively in a team environment.
• Advanced knowledge of enterprise architecture, technology governance, security and risk frameworks, and ability to integrate new capabilities into existing enterprise platforms and operating models.
• Advanced speaking and writing communication skills.
• Advanced knowledge of applicable regulatory and legal compliance obligations, rules and regulations, industry standards, and practices.

Nice To Haves

• Master's degree or MBA in a related field.
• Experience working in a regulated financial-services environment and supporting technology risk assessments, audits, regulatory examinations, and control-evidence requests.
• Previous technical leadership experience.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the enterprise technical owner and subject-matter expert for GitHub Copilot and AI-assisted software engineering.
• Define the technical strategy, architecture, standards, configuration model, and operating model for enterprise GitHub Copilot and agentic software engineering capabilities.
• Engineer, configure, and evolve enterprise Copilot capabilities, including managed settings, policies, model availability, custom agents, skills, instructions, rules, plugins, approved MCP servers, and related extensibility.
• Evaluate new Copilot and agentic engineering capabilities through controlled testing and experimentation, determining enterprise readiness, security and governance needs, adoption strategy, implementation approach, and business value.
• Design and evolve the enterprise Agentic SDLC Harness, governing how AI agents interact with developers, repositories, CI/CD platforms, development tools, and enterprise systems, including orchestration, tool access, context management, permissions, and human oversight.
• Design and implement technical guardrails for AI-assisted engineering, including controls for access, tools and models, MCP server permissions, agent capabilities, repository interactions, and data handling.
• Establish and operate lifecycle management practices for configurations, including source control, peer review, testing, approval, versioning, staged deployment, promotion across environments, and rollback.
• Act as a technical escalation point for complex Copilot and agentic engineering issues involving configuration, authentication, IDE integration, policy enforcement, agent or plugin behavior, MCP integrations, and platform interoperability.
• Establish monitoring and operational practices for platform availability, configuration health, integration reliability, usage, and emerging technical risks.
• Develop reference implementations, technical standards, engineering patterns, playbooks, reusable examples, quick-start guides, and enablement materials to support safe adoption.
• Define and monitor enterprise metrics for adoption, usage, developer experience, quality, reliability, engineering effectiveness, and value realization; use insights to improve capabilities and developer productivity.
• Communicate platform roadmap, adoption, risk, technical health, and value realization to engineering and technology leadership.
• Maintain technical architecture and engineering documentation, including reference architectures, integration patterns, configuration standards, security models, decision records, support procedures, and operational runbooks.
• Partner with project sponsors, engineering teams, platform owners, and technology leaders to refine requirements, evaluate technical approaches, and drive solutions through enterprise adoption.
• Provide technical leadership, influence engineering standards and architectural decisions, communicate complex concepts, and mentor engineers in GitHub Copilot, agentic engineering, DevOps, and related practices.

Benefits

• Competitive salaries
• Ownership stake in the company
• Medical and dental insurance
• Time off
• 401(k) matching program
• Tuition assistance program
• Employee volunteer program
• Wellness program
• Opportunity to build business knowledge and gain hands-on experience with how successful companies operate and manage their finances

What This Job Offers

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