Principle Applied AI Engineer

Pennymac • Cary, NC

8h • Onsite

About The Position

As the Principal Applied AI Engineer, you will be the lead architect of the "cognitive" layer of the AI platform. While the Backend Principal builds the deterministic infrastructure, you will engineer the probabilistic systems that power our "Unified Context Library" and "Agentic Orchestration" layer. You will design the autonomous workflows that turn a Product Manager’s idea into a technical specification, and a User Story into deployable code. This role sits at the intersection of elite software engineering and applied artificial intelligence. You will not be training foundational models from scratch; rather, you will be mastering the art of Applied AI: orchestration, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and the engineering of agentic systems using the AWS Bedrock AgentCore framework. You will work within the AI Platform Services division, a dedicated R&D unit tasked with delivering measurable velocity improvements to the entire organization.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or equivalent, with 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Deep expertise in building backend services and AI chains in Node.js and TypeScript.
• Hands-on experience building applications powered by LLMs.
• Shipped products using frameworks like LangChain, Strands, or AWS Bedrock.
• Proven track record of building production-grade RAG systems.
• Understanding of embeddings, vector stores (Pinecone, Milvus), and semantic search.
• Extensive experience with AWS serverless architecture (Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB).
• Ability to design complex, asynchronous systems where state is fluid and outcomes are probabilistic.
• High ownership, high energy, and the ability to thrive in a fast-paced "internal startup" environment.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with Evaluation Frameworks (e.g., LangSmith, Ragas) for automated testing of LLM outputs.
• Familiarity with the Model Context Protocol (MCP) for standardizing AI tool connections.
• Background in Developer Tools (building CLI tools, IDE plugins, or CI/CD automations).
• Understanding of Graph Databases (e.g., Neo4j) for knowledge graph implementation alongside vector search.
• Familiarity with AWS Bedrock and AgentCore is a significant advantage.

Responsibilities

• Architect the Future of SDLC: You will build the "Agent Factory" that drives our "conveyor belt" of software delivery, moving us from a reactive to a proactive engineering culture.
• Greenfield Innovation: This is a rare chance to build an enterprise-grade AI platform from the ground up, leveraging the latest in AWS Bedrock AgentCore and Agentic AI frameworks.
• High-Impact & Visibility: Your work will directly impact the daily lives of hundreds of engineers and product owners, reducing "Idea-to-MR" cycle times and eliminating manual toil.
• Cutting-Edge Stack: Work with a modern, cloud-native stack (AWS, Node.js/TypeScript) specifically tailored for high-performance AI applications.
• Engineer the probabilistic systems that power our "Unified Context Library" and "Agentic Orchestration" layer.
• Design the autonomous workflows that turn a Product Manager’s idea into a technical specification, and a User Story into deployable code.

Benefits

• Comprehensive Medical, Dental, and Vision
• Paid Time Off Programs including vacation, holidays, illness, and parental leave
• Wellness Programs, Employee Recognition Programs, and onsite gyms and cafe style dining (select locations)
• Retirement benefits, life insurance, 401k match, and tuition reimbursement
• Philanthropy Programs including matching gifts, volunteer grants, charitable grants and corporate sponsorships

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Number of Employees: 501-1,000 employees