Principal AI Engineer - AgenticAI

BMC Software; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 175,800 - 293,000; Full time

Job summary

BMC Software in Santa Clara, California seeks a Principal AI Engineer to develop next-generation AI systems. The individual will lead production AI projects and work with senior management to define systems architecture. Candidates should have over 10 years of experience in software development and a strong command of Python, with hands-on experience in deploying AI-powered products. The position offers a hybrid work model and an annual salary ranging from $175,800 to $293,000 with additional benefits.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software development experience, especially in B2B products.
• Strong foundation in software engineering with expert-level Python.
• Experience in building and deploying AI-powered products in production.

Responsibilities

• Design and build agentic AI systems that operate in production.
• Integrate and operate LLMs for AI services.
• Ensure the platform is shippable and supportable.

Skills

Expert-level Python

AI-powered products deployment

Agent frameworks

Prompt engineering

LLMs and GenAI systems

Tools

AWS SageMaker

Kubernetes

LangChain

Pinecone

Job description

Description and Requirements

BMC trust is not just a word — it’s a way of life! BMC empowers nearly 80% of the Forbes Global 100 to accelerate business value, faster than humanly possible. Our industry‑leading portfolio unlocks human and machine potential to drive business growth, innovation, and sustainable success. BMC does this in a simple and optimized way by connecting people, systems, and data that power the world’s largest organizations so they can seize a competitive advantage.

CareerArc Code: CA‑BS

Hybrid

We are looking for a Principal AI Engineer to build our next‑generation Agentic AI platform from 0–1. This hands‑on, delivery‑driven role is for a senior engineer who has shipped AI‑powered products in real enterprise environments, understands the trade‑offs of production AI systems, and takes full ownership of outcomes — not just models or demos. You will work alongside our VP of Engineering, VP of AI and product leadership to define and build the core AI systems of the platform.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and evolve agentic AI systems that reason, plan, execute, and adapt in production environments.
• Take AI‑driven features from concept to production in a true 0–1 product environment.
• Write and review high‑quality production code (Python‑first) across AI pipelines, inference services, orchestration layers, and supporting systems.
• Implement prompt engineering, tool use, memory, evaluation, and guardrails as first‑class engineering concerns, not experiments.
• Design agent frameworks that balance autonomy with determinism, observability, and safety.
• Make pragmatic architectural trade‑offs across latency, cost, accuracy, scalability, and maintainability.
• Integrate and operate LLMs (commercial and/or open‑source) including model selection, fine‑tuning strategies, embeddings, retrieval (RAG), and inference optimization.
• Address real‑world issues: hallucinations, drift, prompt regressions, failure modes, and customer trust.
• Deploy and operate AI services across cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), including secure enterprise integrations and customer‑specific deployments.
• Design scalable inference and orchestration architectures using containers, APIs, and distributed systems.
• Ensure the platform is shippable, debuggable, and supportable — not fragile or research‑grade.
• Act with founder‑level ownership: identify gaps, propose solutions, and move forward without waiting for perfect requirements.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software development experience, with significant time shipping B2B products used by external customers.
• Strong software engineering foundation with expert‑level Python and experience designing production systems.
• Proven experience building, deploying, and operating AI‑powered products in production, not just prototypes or research.
• Hands‑on experience with LLMs and GenAI systems in real applications (agents, copilots, automation, decision systems).
• Deep understanding of at least several of the following: agent frameworks and orchestration, prompt engineering and tool‑use patterns, RAG architectures and vector search, model evaluation, feedback loops, and monitoring, safety, guardrails, and enterprise controls.
• Hands‑on experience with multiple of the following in real systems: LangGraph and/or LangChain, LlamaIndex, vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, FAISS, Milvus), prompt engineering as a managed, versioned, testable artifact.
• Experience deploying and operating LLMs using AWS SageMaker, Vertex AI, or equivalent managed platforms; direct API integrations (OpenAI, Anthropic).
• Experience designing multi‑agent systems or complex agent workflows.
• Experience commercializing AI features under enterprise constraints (security, compliance, uptime).
• Comfort operating in ambiguity and making decisions with incomplete information.

Nice to Have Skills

• Open‑source GenAI tooling or internal frameworks contributions used at scale.
• Experience with supervised fine‑tuning, parameter‑efficient tuning methods (LoRA, QLoRA), reinforcement learning (RLHF) and preference optimization (PPO, DPO, GRPO).
• Experience deploying LLMs at scale (Kubernetes, model serving, GPU optimization).

Benefits and Compensation

The annual base salary range for this position is a component of BMC’s employee compensation package. The range is $175,800 – $293,000. Other rewards may include a variable plan and country‑specific benefits.

Equal Opportunity Statement

BMC Software is committed to equal‑opportunity employment and strictly prohibits requesting any form of payment in exchange for employment opportunities. If you require a reasonable accommodation, you may request it at our accommodation request page. BMC is committed to equal opportunity employment regardless of race, age, sex, creed, color, religion, citizenship status, sexual orientation, gender, gender expression, gender identity, national origin, disability, marital status, pregnancy, disabled veteran or protected veteran status.