Principal Engineer: AI Productivity & Agentic Automation

Confluent Inc; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-First

Insurance Benefits

Flexible Time Off

Great teammates

Open Culture

Well-being Growth

Job summary

Confluent Inc. seeks a strategic, hands-on leader to define and scale internal agentic AI capabilities across Engineering, Security, and IT, accelerating value for customers and the business.

You will build a roadmap for agentic automation features, AI-driven workflows, and cross-team delivery, driving 60% execution and 40% strategy while ensuring responsible AI adoption. This role requires 8+ years in SaaS/cloud, distributed systems, and proven ability to influence senior stakeholders, with a

Qualifications

• 8+ years driving strategic productivity initiatives, ideally in SaaS/Cloud platforms or developer tools with some proven experience in AI initiatives.
• Expert in building distributed systems and the infrastructure to support it.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams and influence senior stakeholders without direct authority.
• Strong communicator who can translate complex technical strategies into impact-oriented outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Define and evangelize the AI and agentic flows strategy — aligning business metrics, engineering needs, and platform opportunities.
• Build a roadmap for introducing agentic automation features, smart assistants, and AI-driven workflows across all aspects of engineering.
• Identify and resolve bottlenecks across the entire product and software development life cycle.
• Partner with Engineering, Trust and Security to integrate AI capabilities responsibly and at scale.
• Operationalize AI adoption internally and share use cases externally
• Drive complex cross-team projects requiring multi-stakeholder alignment
• Continuously raise the bar for code/architectural quality across engineering
• Lead the delivery of core agentic workflows that improve productivity across engineering
• Balance of hands-on contributions with effective delegation to others. 60% execution and 40% strategy setting.
• Drive measurable adoption of AI tooling and flows with internal teams
• Define success metrics and KPIs (e.g., AI-driven usage lift, automation ROI, reduction in manual workflows).
• Participate in external forums — conferences, podcasts, customer briefings on occasion
• Evolve as the technology landscape shifts
• Write internal playbooks for building and scaling agentic outcomes.

Skills

Strategic leadership

Cross-functional leadership

AI initiatives

LLM integration

Software architecture

Education

SaaS experience

Job description

Confluent Inc. seeks a strategic, hands-on leader to define and scale internal agentic AI capabilities across Engineering, Security, and IT, accelerating value for customers and the business.

You will build a roadmap for agentic automation features, AI-driven workflows, and cross-team delivery, driving 60% execution and 40% strategy while ensuring responsible AI adoption. This role requires 8+ years in SaaS/cloud, distributed systems, and proven ability to influence senior stakeholders, with a