Principal AI Engineer - Enterprise Platform & Orchestration

Elsevier; Philadelphia (Philadelphia County); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Elsevier in Philadelphia seeks a Principal AI Engineer to lead an embedded Innovation Squad from discovery through production. You will assess and harden AI prototypes, deliver new ones and establish agentic AI patterns, orchestration, memory and retrieval for reuse across squads.

You will mentor engineers, finalize requirements with stakeholders, and codify validated solutions into patterns, reference implementations and starter kits while maintaining security and data governance commitments.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering with hands-on AI system design, build, or integration.
• Experience taking AI prototypes to production in enterprise environments.
• LLM orchestration, prompt engineering, context-window management and production guardrails.
• Integration of AI into enterprise systems via APIs and data pipelines with strong security and data governance."
• Cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) including managed AI/ML services.
• Delivery experience with Agile, CI/CD, modern SDLC, and TDD.
• Modeling across relational, columnar and vector stores with solid architectural grounding.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity, frame problems, extract specs, and ship validated outcomes quickly.
• Leadership and delivery management to coordinate work, dependencies and blockers.
• Strong communication and influence to drive technical decisions across teams.
• Budget awareness and collaboration with external resources and managed services.
• Establishing baselines and instrumentation to track productivity, cost and quality across pilots to scale.

Responsibilities

• Owning technical execution from discovery to production; build, assess, and harden prototypes and proofs of concept, and deliver new ones.
• Designing and governing reusable agentic AI patterns (orchestration, tool use, memory, retrieval).
• Ensuring delivery meets architecture, security and data-governance standards; recommend infrastructure, hosting and data residency.
• Codifying validated solutions into patterns, reference implementations, and starter kits for reuse across functions.
• Providing design input and finalizing requirements; work with internal stakeholders and end users in the host function.
• Writing specifications, fixing complex bugs, and designing complex data models.
• Acting as the primary technical contact for external resources and the squad's go-to on coding and AI.
• Establishing baselines and reporting measurable outcomes for every initiative.
• Maintaining visibility of in-flight AI pilots to prevent duplication and surface candidates for reuse.
• Ensure alignment with enterprise security and central technology infrastructure standards.
• Continuously evaluate emerging technologies and mentor team members.

Skills

Software engineering

LLM orchestration

Enterprise integration

Cloud platforms

Delivery & SDLC

Data architecture

Leadership

Communication

Commercial awareness

Measurement

Job description

Elsevier in Philadelphia seeks a Principal AI Engineer to lead an embedded Innovation Squad from discovery through production. You will assess and harden AI prototypes, deliver new ones and establish agentic AI patterns, orchestration, memory and retrieval for reuse across squads.

You will mentor engineers, finalize requirements with stakeholders, and codify validated solutions into patterns, reference implementations and starter kits while maintaining security and data governance commitments.