Principal AI Engineer: Production LLM Systems

Appian; McLean (VA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 350,000; Full time

Job summary

Appian, headquartered in McLean, VA, seeks a Principal Applied AI Engineer to lead production LLM systems and drive enterprise-grade AI orchestration. You will shape architecture, mentor engineers, and collaborate across teams to deliver scalable AI-powered automation for large enterprises.

You will leverage cutting-edge tools to design, implement, and optimize AI systems, focusing on reliability, performance, and code quality in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor of Science in Computer Science or related field required (equivalent experience not accepted).
• 10+ years of software development experience; BS (or 8+ years with MS).
• Production LLM systems design and operation experience.
• Expertise across code generation, agents, retrieval, structured generation, tool use, model routing, evaluation, and observability.
• Experience using AI coding assistants; ability to evaluate and coach on AI-generated code in production.
• Strong distributed-systems, API, security, and reliability foundations.
• Cross-team influence and senior IC capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain high-performance production LLM systems.
• Lead platform modernization to keep core codebase and AI systems cutting-edge and performant.
• Use AI coding tools to generate, review, and evaluate AI-assisted code.
• Drive architecture and delivery across complex, AI-powered layers from scoping through implementation.
• Build prototypes to de-risk novel AI approaches and set coding standards.
• Optimize performance, latency, scalability and reliability of core software.
• Lead code reviews and build automation to prevent recurrence of problems.
• Mentor engineers at multiple levels and accelerate technical growth.
• Publish high-quality technical documentation across Engineering.

Skills

Production LLM systems

AI systems expertise

AI‑augmented development

Cross‑team influence

Production mastery

Communication & alignment

Architectural leadership

Education

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science or related field

Job description

Appian, headquartered in McLean, VA, seeks a Principal Applied AI Engineer to lead production LLM systems and drive enterprise-grade AI orchestration. You will shape architecture, mentor engineers, and collaborate across teams to deliver scalable AI-powered automation for large enterprises.

You will leverage cutting-edge tools to design, implement, and optimize AI systems, focusing on reliability, performance, and code quality in a fast-paced environment.