Principal AI Engineer - Remote, Scale Critical Finance Apps

Ladders; United States; Remote; USD 250,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fortune top workplace

Medical coverage subsidies

401(k) with matching

HSA/FSAs

Parental/family leave

Career development

Job summary

Ladders is seeking a Principal AI Software Engineer for a remote US-based role with strong leadership and cross-team influence. You will design, deploy, and scale AI-enabled software, focusing on agentic systems and reliable AI services that improve decision-making and platform modernization.

You will lead the evaluation of models, set platform standards, and mentor engineers while collaborating with business partners to automate processes and deliver production-grade AI capabilities.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software development experience with a focus on production systems.
• Experience delivering production AI/ML systems, particularly LLM applications.
• Proficiency with modern agent frameworks such as Claude Agent SDK and LangGraph.
• Experience in prompt and context engineering, model evaluation, and observability of AI systems.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end AI and platform initiatives that enhance business capabilities and underlying systems.
• Design and maintain agentic workflows for key processes such as loan intake and document review.
• Define and establish new platform patterns and capabilities for broader organizational use.
• Lead model evaluation and routing decisions based on cost, latency, and quality.
• Design interfaces for other teams involving agent interactions and state management.
• Establish practices for evaluation and reliability of AI performance.
• Collaborate across teams, mentor others, and proactively identify risks and trade-offs.

Skills

Production systems

Python programming

Backend frameworks

SQL proficiency

LLM/AI systems knowledge

Prompts/Context engineering

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Claude Agent SDK

LangGraph

Job description

Ladders is seeking a Principal AI Software Engineer for a remote US-based role with strong leadership and cross-team influence. You will design, deploy, and scale AI-enabled software, focusing on agentic systems and reliable AI services that improve decision-making and platform modernization.

You will lead the evaluation of models, set platform standards, and mentor engineers while collaborating with business partners to automate processes and deliver production-grade AI capabilities.