Lead Principal Platform Software Engineer, AI Acceleration, Developer Tools

Oracle; Nashville (TN); On-site; USD 97,000 - 306,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) matching

Paid time off and holidays

Parental leave

Job summary

Oracle is seeking a Lead Principal Engineer to shape AI Acceleration and Developer Tools. You will drive architecture, prototypes, and platform capabilities for AI-powered developer experiences at OCI scale while collaborating with AI/ML teams, product managers, and service organizations.

You will stay hands-on, evaluate emergent AI technologies, and define durable platform abstractions that can evolve with changing models and workflows, ensuring security, observability, and cost efficiency.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience with architecting complex production systems.
• Strong foundation in distributed systems, cloud platforms, or large-scale backend systems.
• Demonstrated experience applying or evaluating LLMs, generative AI, or AI agents.
• Ability to experiment in ambiguous environments and translate results into direction.
• Experience influencing architecture across teams without direct authority.
• Experience bringing new technologies from proof-of-concept to production at scale.
• BS or MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related field.

Responsibilities

• Build architecture and strategy for AI Acceleration across Developer Tools.
• Experiment with prototypes and evaluate emerging models and agentic technologies.
• Translate evolving AI capabilities into actionable architectural direction.
• Influence technical direction across the org and align stakeholders.
• Architect platforms for AI agents, LLM-powered experiences, and integration.
• Define engineering patterns to move prototypes to secure, observable services.
• Measure impact on developer productivity using telemetry and feedback.
• Design platforms that evolve with changing AI models and workflows.
• Represent the org in architecture reviews and technical forums.

Skills

Software architecture

Distributed systems

Cloud platforms

AI/LLMs

Technical leadership

Education

BS or MS in Computer Science or related field

Job description

Job Description
This is an emerging space where the technology, developer expectations, and best practices are changing quickly. We are looking for a technical leader who is energized by that uncertainty: someone who is willing to

Job Description
This is an emerging space where the technology, developer expectations, and best practices are changing quickly. We are looking for a technical leader who is energized by that uncertainty: someone who is willing to experiment, prototype, challenge established approaches, learn quickly, and form strong technical opinions based on evidence. You will explore new capabilities across LLMs, AI agents, reasoning systems, context and retrieval, evaluation, and intelligent automation, while determining which ideas can deliver meaningful and durable improvements to developer productivity.
Success requires more than applying existing AI technologies. You will identify where AI can fundamentally change engineering workflows, develop a technical point of view on where we should invest, and define the architectures and platform capabilities needed to move promising ideas from experimentation to production at OCI scale.
As a Lead Principal Engineer, you will influence the technical direction of AI-powered developer experiences across teams and organizational boundaries. You will work with senior engineers, engineering leaders, product managers, AI/ML teams, researchers, and OCI service organizations to identify opportunities, test hypotheses, establish architectural direction, and build alignment around consequential technical decisions.
You will remain deeply hands-on. You will build prototypes, evaluate emerging technologies, design foundational systems, and work alongside engineers to prove what is possible. Equally important, you will know when an experiment has provided enough evidence to invest, pivot, or stop—and how to turn successful experimentation into reliable, secure, scalable platform capabilities.
Responsibilities
RESPONSIBILITIES

• Build the architecture and technical strategy for AI Acceleration across Developer Tools, identifying where AI can materially improve developer productivity and establishing the foundational platforms, abstractions, and services required to enable those experiences.
• Experiment aggressively and learn quickly by building prototypes, evaluating emerging models and agentic technologies, testing unconventional approaches, and using measurable results to determine which ideas should progress from exploration to production.
• Create clarity from ambiguity by identifying high-value problems, forming technical hypotheses, challenging assumptions, evaluating competing approaches, and translating rapidly evolving AI capabilities into actionable architectural direction.
• Influence technical direction across the org building alignment among senior engineers, engineering leaders, AI/ML teams, product organizations, and service teams around architectural choices and strategic investments without relying on direct authority.
• Architect platforms for AI agents, LLM-powered developer experiences, context and retrieval, tool integration, orchestration, evaluation, and intelligent automation, with clear separation between rapidly evolving AI technologies and durable platform abstractions.
• Establish a disciplined path from prototype to production, defining engineering patterns that allow successful experiments to evolve into secure, observable, reliable, cost-efficient, and scalable OCI services.
• Raise the technical bar for AI engineering through architecture reviews, reference implementations, evaluation frameworks, technical mentorship, engineering standards, and clear communication of complex architectural tradeoffs.
• Develop mechanisms to measure whether AI actually improves the developer experience, using evaluation, telemetry, experimentation, developer feedback, and productivity signals to guide technical decisions and future investment.
• Anticipate changes in models, agent architectures, developer workflows, and AI infrastructure, designing platforms that can evolve without requiring fundamental rearchitecture as the underlying technology changes.
• Serve as a senior technical voice for AI Acceleration and Developer Tools, shaping technical strategy and representing the organization in architecture reviews and cross-OCI technical forums.
  

Required Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience with a demonstrated track record of architecting complex production systems and providing technical leadership across multiple engineering teams.
• Strong technical foundation in distributed systems, cloud platforms, developer infrastructure, or large-scale backend systems, with the architectural depth to design secure, scalable, reliable, and extensible platforms.
• Demonstrated experience applying or evaluating LLMs, generative AI, AI agents, or related AI technologies, with a strong understanding of both their potential and the engineering challenges involved in building production AI systems.
• Proven ability to experiment in ambiguous and rapidly changing technical environments—forming hypotheses, building prototypes, evaluating results, learning from unsuccessful approaches, and turning promising ideas into clear technical direction.
• Demonstrated ability to influence architecture and engineering strategy across teams without direct authority, establish a strong technical point of view, and build alignment among senior technical and organizational stakeholders.
• Experience taking new technologies or platform capabilities from exploration and proof-of-concept through architecture, production deployment, scale, and adoption, while balancing speed of innovation with long-term engineering quality.
• BS or MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
  

Desired Qualifications

• Experience building AI-powered developer tools, coding agents, engineering assistants, intelligent testing or debugging systems, autonomous development workflows, or AI-driven developer productivity platforms.
• Deep practical knowledge of LLMs, agentic architectures, reasoning models, tool use, context engineering, retrieval, inference, orchestration, evaluation, and emerging AI software engineering patterns.
• Experience designing AI platform abstractions that accommodate rapidly changing models and capabilities while providing stable interfaces, security, observability, governance, and operational reliability.
• Track record of using experimentation and quantitative evaluation to make decisions about emerging technologies, including defining success criteria and determining when to scale, pivot, or discontinue an approach.
• Demonstrated ability to challenge conventional approaches and introduce new technical directions, while mentoring senior engineers and building organizational consensus around high-impact architectural decisions.
  

Qualifications
Disclaimer:

Certain U.S. based or U.S. customer or client-facing roles may be required to comply with applicable requirements, such as immunization/occupational health mandates, and/or drug testing requirements.
Range and benefit information provided in this posting are specific to the stated locations only
US: Hiring Range in USD from: $96,800 - $306,400 per year. May be eligible for bonus, equity, and compensation deferral.
Oracle maintains broad salary ranges for its roles in order to account for variations in knowledge, skills, experience, market conditions and locations, as well as reflect Oracle's differing products, industries and lines of business.
Candidates are typically placed into the range based on the preceding factors as well as internal peer equity.
Oracle US offers a comprehensive benefits package which includes the following:

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, including expert medical opinion
• Short term disability and long term disability
• Life insurance and AD&D
• Supplemental life insurance (Employee/Spouse/Child)
• Health care and dependent care Flexible Spending Accounts
• Pre-tax commuter and parking benefits
• 401(k) Savings and Investment Plan with company match
• Paid time off: Flexible Vacation is provided to all eligible employees assigned to a salaried (non-overtime eligible) position. Accrued Vacation is provided to all other employees eligible for vacation benefits. For employees working at least 35 hours per week, the vacation accrual rate is 13 days annually for the first three years of employment and 18 days annually for subsequent years of employment. Vacation accrual is prorated for employees working between 20 and 34 hours per week. Employees working fewer than 20 hours per week are not eligible for vacation.
• 11 paid holidays
• Paid sick leave: 72 hours of paid sick leave upon date of hire. Refreshes each calendar year. Unused balance will carry over each year up to a maximum cap of 112 hours.
• Paid parental leave
• Adoption assistance
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Financial planning and group legal
• Voluntary benefits including auto, homeowner and pet insurance
  

The role will generally accept applications for at least three calendar days from the posting date or as long as the job remains posted.
As part of Oracle's onboarding process and consistent with applicable law, US-based employees are required to complete identity verification, which involves the collection and processing of their biometric information. Accommodations to this requirement may be granted following an individualized assessment.
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