Principal Engineer, Applied AI & Build Standards

Best Buy • Richfield, MN

6d • $138,000 - $247,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

As Principal Engineer on Best Buy’s Applied AI & Build Standards team, internally known as AI Rails, you will set the technical direction for a shared platform and the standards that enable thousands of Best Buy engineers and technologists to use AI agents with appropriate access, security, and cost controls. This is a hands-on individual contributor role with no direct reports; you will lead through technical authority and code. The role focuses on building trusted agent capabilities that save teams time and measuring their financial return.

The position is hybrid: onsite Monday through Thursday at Best Buy’s corporate office in Richfield, Minnesota, with the option to work virtually from home or another non-Best Buy location on Friday. The role is eligible for immigration sponsorship.

Requirements

• At least 7 years of hands-on software engineering experience with a bachelor’s degree, or equivalent relevant professional experience.
• Experience setting technical direction for a shared platform relied on by many engineering teams, such as an API gateway or developer platform.
• Recent hands-on experience, within the last two years, building LLM-based agent systems beyond a prototype, including tool calling, evaluation, and guardrails.
• Experience securing software that acts on a user’s behalf, including authentication, authorization, least-privilege access, and audit logging.
• Experience leading technical decisions across teams without direct authority and explaining trade-offs in writing to senior leaders.
• Daily, hands-on use of AI coding agents to design, build, and review code.

Nice To Haves

• At least 9 years of relevant professional experience.
• Bachelor’s degree in IT, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• Experience taking an internal platform from pilot to production at scale, with quantified results such as usage or cost per task.
• Experience with production runtime controls for AI agents, such as policy gateways, human approval for high-risk actions, kill switches, and immutable audit logs.
• Experience taking AI capabilities through security, risk, and compliance review in a large or regulated enterprise.
• Hands-on MCP experience with servers, gateways, or tool discovery, and context engineering involving accurate, current, permission-aware company data for agents.

Responsibilities

• Own the platform reference architecture and roadmap, including the agent harness, MCP gateway, durable execution, model routing, and cost attribution.
• Recommend build-versus-buy decisions for core components and lead them through evaluation, decision, and rollout.
• Define the trust model for AI agents, including risk tiers, approval gates for high-risk actions, kill switches, and audit logs tied to a person.
• Set engineering excellence standards, including criteria for completion at each stage, evaluation-gated releases, and approval of new models.
• Give senior leaders a risk-calibrated view of agent safety and match controls to the cost of potential mistakes.
• Coach engineers across teams through design reviews, RFCs, and office hours, and bring the technical perspective to AI governance.
• Use Agentic AI as a core development and coding tool.

Benefits

• Competitive pay.
• Employee discount.
• Financial savings and retirement resources.
• Support for physical and mental well-being.
• Leaves of absence and potential pay sources, based on eligibility.
• Intermittent or reduced-schedule leave for certain medical or family care leaves.
• Paid time off for full-time and part-time employees, subject to work location, employment status, salary or hourly status, and years of continued or bridged service.
• Incentive pay for certain roles, subject to eligibility.

What This Job Offers

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