Principal AI Engineer

Compunnel Inc.; Columbus (OH); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Compunnel, Inc. seeks a Principal AI Engineer to found and shape the enterprise AI platform. You will set engineering standards, build production LLM/agent systems end-to-end, and own delivery patterns that scale with the team. The role is hands-on, shipping code weekly and driving production readiness from day one.

You will lead the MCP gateway, CI/CD pipelines, and integration work with SAP/IT teams in a Columbus-based environment, laying the foundation for future engineers.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience.
• Proficient in Python and/or TypeScript.
• Hands-on experience building production LLM/agent systems end-to-end.
• Expertise in evaluation engineering with CI/CD integration.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps).
• Identity-aware API and integration design.
• Experience with vendor partnerships while keeping core capability in-house.
• Daily use of AI assistants in development workflows.

Responsibilities

• Build and operate AI environments including the governed enterprise MCP gateway and Azure AI foundation.
• Implement SAP identity passthrough in partnership with IT/SAP teams.
• Own CI/CD pipelines for AI assets, with evaluation and observability harness instrumented from day one.
• Ship production AI use cases including retrieval, grounding, and agentic workflows released behind evaluation gates.
• Co-build with integration partners during initial platform build, internalizing patterns for long-term capability.
• Define engineering standards, tooling, and practices, serving as technical lead as the team grows.

Skills

Python

TypeScript

LLM/agentic systems

Evaluation engineering

CI/CD

API design

Vendor partnerships

AI assistants in workflows

Tools

GitHub Actions

Azure DevOps

Azure

Job description

The Principal AI Engineer will be the founding engineer responsible for building and operating the enterprise AI platform and its first production applications end-to-end. This role sets the engineering standards — repository structure, testing, deployment patterns — that future hires will build upon. It is a principal-scope, hands-on role where you ship code weekly and own it in production.

Key Responsibilities

• Bu ild and operate AI environments including the governed enterprise MCP gateway and Azure AI foundation.
• Implement SAP identity passthrough in partnership with IT/SAP teams.
• Own CI/CD pipelines for AI assets, with evaluation and observability harness instrumented from day one.
• Ship production AI use cases including retrieval, grounding, and agentic workflows released behind evaluation gates.
• Co-build with integration partners during initial platform build, internalizing patterns for long-term capability.
• Define engineering standards, tooling, and practices, serving as technical lead as the team grows.

First 90 Days

• Deliver the MCP gateway carrying production traffic for the first use case in a company-owned Azure environment.
• Establish evaluation scores and telemetry flowing from day-one instrumentation.
• Publish engineering standards for repository structure, testing, and deployment.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience.
• Strong coding fluency in Python and/or TypeScript.
• Hands-on experience building and operating production LLM/agentic systems end-to-end (data flows, orchestration, deployment, evaluation, incident response).
• Expertise in evaluation engineering: designing eval suites, datasets, metrics, regression tests wired into CI/CD.
• Ownership of CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, or equivalent).
• Identity-aware API and integration design.
• Sound judgment in vendor partnerships while keeping core capability in-house.
• Daily use of AI assistants (Claude, Microsoft Copilot) in development workflows.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience implementing Model Context Protocol (MCP).
• Exposure to SAP ERP integration or other enterprise ERP systems.
• Experience with enterprise integration/automation (iPaaS) platforms.
• Prior technical-lead or mentoring experience.