Sr Software Engineer I (AWS - Hybrid Role)

Principal Financial Group • Raleigh, NC

6d • Hybrid

About The Position

Join Agent Enablement, a team that helps Principal engineers design, build, and ship trustworthy AI agents. This Senior Software Engineer will build the internal platform, tooling, and guardrails that engineering teams rely on to build, test, and operate AI agents. The work includes SDKs, templates, evaluation harnesses, and guardrails using Python, TypeScript, AWS, and AWS AgentCore. The engineer will partner with platform architects, security, and engineering teams to take tooling from concept to secure, well-tested, production-grade capability.

The organization operates in a product-driven Agile/Lean DevOps environment and emphasizes innovation, experimentation, close collaboration with end users and product owners, and diverse perspectives. The role involves owning design and solution architecture across systems and services, delivering high-quality software, improving engineers’ day-to-day agent-building experience, and guiding solutions that balance technical, analytical, and product needs. The engineer will advise on complex technical issues, promote reusable solutions across the enterprise, model secure practices, mentor colleagues, and consult with business partners on technical trends that support business strategy.

The position offers an in-office or hybrid work arrangement, with hybrid work blending at least three office days in a typical workweek. The role is salaried and eligible for the company's Flexible Time Off program. The targeted base salary is $116,000–$156,000 per year; actual compensation depends on factors including location, experience, education, licensure requirements, and skill level. Non-sales positions may participate in a bonus program.

Requirements

• Associate or bachelor’s degree, preferably in computer science, technology, engineering, or a mathematics-related field, or equivalent experience.
• At least 6 years of professional software engineering experience.
• At least 3 years of experience working with AWS services; examples include Lambda, S3, API Gateway, DynamoDB, EventBridge, and CloudWatch.
• At least 3 years of experience with CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code such as AWS CDK, and automated testing and security scanning.
• Ability to make well-reasoned design decisions and tradeoffs and work through unfamiliar code to solve underlying business problems.
• Track record of identifying and proactively addressing technical debt and risk.
• Experience mentoring engineers through pairing, code review, or design collaboration.
• Experience designing test and evaluation strategies for probabilistic or AI-powered systems, including automated evaluation, regression testing, and production quality measurement.
• Experience designing secure identity, authorization, and tool-access patterns for distributed applications, with understanding of least privilege, delegated access, secrets management, and authorization across service boundaries.
• Experience designing APIs and distributed systems, including authentication, authorization, event-driven architectures, failure handling, resiliency, and observability.

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity with AWS AgentCore or other agentic AI/LLM orchestration frameworks.
• Hands-on experience building and deploying cloud-native applications on AWS with Python and/or TypeScript.
• Exposure to prompt engineering, evaluation frameworks, or responsible-AI guardrails for LLM-based systems.
• Experience building developer tools, SDKs, or internal platforms, with attention to the experience of engineers using them.
• Familiarity with agent interoperability patterns and protocols such as MCP, tool/function calling, agent-to-service integration, and API-based capability discovery.

Responsibilities

• Own design and solution architecture for team work spanning multiple systems and services.
• Deliver well-designed software on time using appropriate technologies.
• Design, build, and operate the agent-builder platform and tooling, including SDKs, templates, evaluation harnesses, and guardrails, using Python, TypeScript, AWS, and AWS AgentCore.
• Improve the experience of engineers building agents through faster iteration and clearer patterns.
• Lead solutions that balance technical, analytical, and product needs.
• Serve as a technical resource for highly complex issues and influence decisions beyond the team.
• Create solutions that can be reused and shared across the enterprise.
• Model secure coding, code analysis, data protection, and encryption practices, and guide the team on controls for security and compliance.
• Mentor and support colleagues through code review, documentation, and technical guidance.
• Consult with business partners on emerging technical trends and directions that support business strategy.

Benefits

• Flexible Time Off (FTO) for salaried employees, with paid time away for vacation, personal needs, or short-term illness and no set number of days.
• Pension eligibility.
• Opportunity for non-sales positions to participate in a bonus program.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Associate degree