Principal AI Software Engineering Leader

HITT Contracting Inc.; Falls Church (VA); On-site; USD 143,000 - 193,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonuses

Health coverage

401(k)

Wellness program

Paid holidays

Job summary

HITT Contracting Inc. is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead AI-native development across our engineering practice, reporting to the Head of Software Engineering.

You will architect agentic workflows, write production code daily with AI agents, and define patterns that scale across sites. You will build the platform, tooling, and guardrails needed for rapid, reliable delivery in field environments while mentoring engineers and helping recruit top talent.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field; equivalent practical experience.
• 10+ years of professional software engineering, with staff/principal level experience.
• Expert fluency with AI-assisted and agentic development, coding agents, LLM APIs, and tool integrations.
• Track record shipping production software with cloud-native services, APIs, CI/CD, and IaC.
• Mentor and upskill engineers; introduce new tools and practices.

Responsibilities

• Architect and build AI-native applications and agentic workflows end to end.
• Define technical patterns for agentic development and integration with tools.
• Establish evaluation, testing, observability, and security practices for AI software.
• Prototype quickly, then harden winners into reusable products for jobsites.
• Stand up engineering platform, templates, and libraries for teams.
• Lead code quality, security, and performance improvements; oversee governance.
• Mentor engineers, recruit talent, and promote AI-enabled methods across teams.
• Collaborate with project teams and executives, communicating tradeoffs clearly.

Skills

AI-assisted development

Agentic development

Coding agents

LLM APIs

CI/CD

Cloud-native

Architectural judgment

Mentoring engineers

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering

Advanced degree a plus

Tools

Claude Code

GitHub Copilot

Cursor

Job description

HITT Contracting Inc. is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead AI-native development across our engineering practice, reporting to the Head of Software Engineering.

You will architect agentic workflows, write production code daily with AI agents, and define patterns that scale across sites. You will build the platform, tooling, and guardrails needed for rapid, reliable delivery in field environments while mentoring engineers and helping recruit top talent.