Principal AI Software Engineer

Selby Jennings; United States; On-site; USD 250,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Selby Jennings seeks a Principal AI Software Engineer to lead AI initiatives from concept to production in a fast-paced financial services setting.

This high-impact role focuses on building AI-powered products, intelligent workflows, and internal AI platforms while partnering with internal stakeholders and external clients.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience.
• Deep expertise in Python and backend application development.
• Proven track record building and scaling production AI/ML systems.
• Hands-on production experience with LLMs, agentic AI, RAG, embeddings, and modern AI frameworks.
• Strong system design and architecture experience.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Prior experience in financial services, fintech, capital markets, real estate tech, or regulated industries is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Build and deploy production-grade AI applications and agentic workflows.
• Design scalable backend services and AI platform capabilities that can be leveraged across multiple teams.
• Develop systems utilizing LLMs, RAG, embeddings, vector search, agent frameworks, and workflow orchestration.
• Establish best practices for AI evaluation, observability, testing, reliability, and governance.
• Drive technical architecture decisions and mentor engineers across the organization.
• Partner with stakeholders to identify high-impact opportunities for AI-driven automation and decision support.

Skills

Python

Backend development

LLMs

Agentic AI

RAG

Embeddings

Vector search

Model evaluation

System design

Communication

Stakeholder management

Regulatory domain experience

Tools

Workflow orchestration

Job description

A leading financial services organization is seeking a Principal AI Software Engineer to help define and build the next generation of AI-powered products, intelligent workflows, and internal AI platforms. This is a high impact individual contributor role focused on taking AI initiatives from concept to production while partnering closely with stakeholders internally as well as external clients.

What You'll Be Doing:

• Build and deploy production-grade AI applications and agentic workflows.
• Design scalable backend services and AI platform capabilities that can be leveraged across multiple teams.
• Develop systems utilizing LLMs, RAG, embeddings, vector search, agent frameworks, and workflow orchestration.
• Establish best practices for AI evaluation, observability, testing, reliability, and governance.
• Drive technical architecture decisions and mentor engineers across the organization.
• Partner with stakeholders to identify high-impact opportunities for AI-driven automation and decision support.

What We're Looking For:

• 12+ years of software engineering experience.
• Deep expertise in Python and backend application development.
• Proven track record building and scaling production AI/ML systems.
• Hands-on production experience with LLMs, agentic AI, RAG, embeddings, model evaluation, and modern AI frameworks.
• Strong system design and architecture experience.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills. This role requires frequent collaboration with technical and non-technical teams and the ability to translate complex concepts into business value.
• Prior experience in financial services, fintech, capital markets, real estate technology, or other highly regulated industries is a plus.

Additional Information:

• Base salary targeted at $250,000 - $300,000 plus discretionary bonus.
• Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States. Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.