Sr Principal Applied AI Engineer

Autodesk•AMER - United States - Kansas - Offsite/Home, KS

7d•$178,875 - $320,650

About The Position

The work we do at Autodesk touches nearly every person on the planet. By creating software tools for making buildings, machines, and even the latest movies, we influence and empower some of the most creative people in the world to solve problems that matter. Autodesk is seeking a Senior Principal AI/ML Engineer, Multimodal and Agentic Construction Intelligence to help define and deliver the next generation of AI applications across Autodesk Construction Cloud. This is a unique senior technical leadership role for someone who can operate across natural language understanding, computer vision, multimodal AI, and agentic systems, while staying grounded in the realities of construction workflows and customer needs. We are looking for a leader who understands how to build intelligent systems that reason over project data, drawings, specifications, RFIs, issues, schedules, photos, and site context, and turn those capabilities into real product experiences that create measurable value for construction teams. This is not a pure research scientist role. It is an engineering and applied AI leadership role for someone with a proven track record of shipping AI and ML systems in the construction space, partnering closely with product and design, mentoring engineers and ML practitioners, and shaping both technical direction and workflow impact.

Requirements

Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Data Science, Information Systems or equivalent industry experience
At least 8 years of industry experience in software engineering, AI/ML systems, computer vision, applied AI, or related domains
Proven track record of building and shipping AI or ML systems in the construction, AEC, BIM/VDC, project controls, field operations, or construction technology space
Strong experience across multiple AI domains, including a combination of: natural language understanding or LLM applications, computer vision or multimodal AI, retrieval, search, or document intelligence, agentic workflows or orchestration systems
Strong software engineering and systems design fundamentals, including production-quality implementation, APIs, cloud services, testing, observability, and operational reliability
Demonstrated ability to work closely with Product and cross-functional partners to define requirements, evaluate tradeoffs, and ship high-impact customer-facing capabilities
Demonstrated experience mentoring engineers, leading technical direction, and operating as a force multiplier across teams
Strong communication skills and the ability to influence technical and non-technical stakeholders

Nice To Haves

Experience building multimodal AI systems that connect text, drawings, images, site photos, metadata, and workflow context
Experience with LLM applications, RAG, tool use, knowledge systems, agent orchestration, or MCP-style architectures
Experience with computer vision techniques such as document understanding, image classification, detection, segmentation, visual grounding, OCR, or vision-language models
Experience designing ML-ready representations for AEC data, including the ability to understand, structure, and choose appropriate representations for models working with complex design and construction data.
Experience designing evaluation frameworks for AI systems, including workflow quality, response quality, retrieval quality, precision, recall, latency, and trust metrics
Experience with permissions-aware retrieval, governance, responsible AI practices, and evidence-based user experiences
Experience building AI systems for construction workflows such as document management, specifications, submittals, issues, quality, safety, inspections, coordination, field reporting, preconstruction, or project controls
Experience building shared services or platform capabilities that support multiple AI applications or teams
Experience working with product managers and designers to translate domain pain points into shipped AI product capabilities
Familiarity with construction ontologies, connected project data, BIM/CAD artifacts, and the operational realities of project delivery

Responsibilities

Define and lead technical strategy for multimodal and agentic AI capabilities across Autodesk Construction Cloud
Drive the architecture and delivery of intelligent systems that combine NLU, retrieval, computer vision, multimodal reasoning, and agentic workflows
Build and evolve AI applications that work across construction data such as specifications, drawings, RFIs, issues, submittals, schedules, meeting content, photos, and field observations
Partner closely with Product, UX, Engineering, and domain stakeholders to identify high-value construction workflows and turn them into scalable AI features
Shape the design of agentic systems that can retrieve, reason, summarize, recommend, and take workflow-aware actions in trusted and governed ways
Lead the development of evaluation harnesses, benchmark suites, and quality frameworks for multimodal and agentic AI systems
Help define how AI systems should behave in construction contexts, including grounding, evidence, permissions, traceability, fallback behavior, and human-in-the-loop controls
Drive technical direction for reusable AI services and platform capabilities that can support multiple construction workflows and product surfaces
Mentor senior and mid-level engineers, data scientists, and ML engineers, and help raise the bar for architecture, experimentation, engineering quality, and technical judgment
Influence roadmap decisions through strong partnership with product leadership and by connecting technical investments to customer value and business outcomes
Represent Construction in broader Autodesk AI platform conversations and help ensure construction workflows shape platform patterns and standards