Principal Platform Engineer – Applied AI (Remote)

First American•Santa Ana, CA

17h•Remote

About The Position

Join a team that puts its People First! Since 1889, First American (NYSE: FAF) has held an unwavering belief in its people. They are passionate about what they do, and we are equally passionate about fostering an environment where all feel welcome, supported, and empowered to be innovative and reach their full potential. Our inclusive, people-first culture has earned our company numerous accolades, including being named to the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For® list for ten consecutive years. We have also earned awards as a best place to work for women, diversity and LGBTQ+ employees, and have been included on more than 50 regional best places to work lists. First American will always strive to be a great place to work, for all. For more information, please visit www.careers.firstam.com. Remote Work Welcome Be part of a transformative team shaping how First American builds and delivers AI technology capabilities to enhance our Platform Engineering and Technical Services groups. We are looking for the best-of-the-best technology experts who envision, design, build, and deliver innovative solutions that provide exceptional experiences and lasting value to the company. First American is seeking Principal Applied-AI Platform Engineer candidates to grow our team. The ideal candidate has strong technical expertise, a product mindset, and takes a hands-on approach to leading a team building high-quality, sustainable AI-powered solutions. As a Principal Applied-AI Platform Engineer, you will lead a small, focused platform engineering delivery team to drive initiatives and build fast, clean, resilient solutions in AI-automation and intelligence capabilities, enhance operational excellence, reduce toil, and amplify the impact of AI across our organization.

Requirements

7 + years of platform engineering or DevOps experience with deep expertise in SRE principles, DevOps practices, and operational workflows.
Proven track record of enhancing platform and IT operations ad capabilities using AI
Hands-on experience using agentic workflows and MCP server integrations.
Expert-level experience with at least one major cloud provider (AWS/GC P/Azure ), container ized development (Docker) , and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CloudFormation, Ansible) .
Experience driving engineering best practices for high-functioning P latform E ngineering teams through effective use of tools and automation.
Passion and expertise for integration with back-end services and APIs using modern architectures and authentication mechanisms ( Oauth ) .
A strong understanding of both software engineering and DevOps principles and modern infrastructure operations.
Ability to build robust, high-scale, generic , and reusable solutions.
Ability to lead, mentor , and influence P latform and DevOps E ngineers to share knowledge and improve quality.
Ability to unblock yourself and help accelerate the team in achieving their goals.
Familiarity with deployment and observability strategies that support continuous delivery and high availability in a cloud-native environment.
An outcome-oriented approach using metrics and data to understand development productivity metrics (e.g., code churn, commit size, test coverage, etc.) that inform areas for continuous improvement.
Effective verbal and written communication skills, with strong relationship, collaborative, and organizational skills.

Nice To Haves

AI ecosystem and integration – MCP, agentic clients and frameworks, etc.
Infrastructure automation tooling such as Terraform and Ansible .
Experience with parallel execution models and time-boxed delivery methodologies .
Track record of building reusable AI patterns and frameworks that accelerate adoption .
Working within a highly regulated industry such as Financial Services or Healthcare .

Responsibilities

Technical Leadership: Drive enterprise-wide technical decisions and deliver organizational transformation through AI-empowerment .
Mentor and develop talent for a team of senior engineers, providing technical leadership.
Lead AI-Powered Platform Solutions: Design and build AI-enhanced capabilities for platform engineering workflows including intelligent monitoring, automated incident response , and predictive capacity planning.
Establish architecture patterns and best practices for integrating AI into platform services, ensuring solutions are maintainable, observable, and fault-tolerant .
Deliver Production Impact: Ship AI solutions that measurably improve operational metrics including MTTR reduction, toil automation, incident prevention, and engineering productivity improvement.
Own end-to-end delivery from problem identification through production deployment, training, and knowledge-transfer.
Collaborate/Partner: Work in tandem with our product teams and leaders to identify and implement optimal AI solutions throughout our Platform Engineering and Technical Services groups within the company .
Partner with platform engineering, SRE, and IT teams to identify opportunities where AI can transform their operational capabilities and deliver hands-on implementation improvements.
Operational Excellence : Design and lead the development of high-quality, secure, and observable solutions .
Create frameworks, libraries, and patterns that accelerate AI adoption across the organization and enable teams to extend solutions independently.
Continuous Improvement: Manage the team in achieving ambitious goals, providing regular feedback, and driving continuous improvement.
You will participate in all aspects of our software development lifecycle for AI solutions, including planning, defining requirements, developing, and testing those solutions with the team.

Benefits

Based on eligibility, First American offers a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, 401k, PTO/paid sick leave and other great benefits like an employee stock purchase plan.

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