Principal Engineer I – Foundry Administrator

Socket.dev; Mesa (AZ); On-site; USD 170,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical and dental insurance

401k matching program

Time off

Employee volunteer program

Wellness program

Tuition assistance

Job summary

Western Alliance Bank seeks a Principal Engineer I to own strategy, architecture, governance and operations of the enterprise AI gateway, Foundry, and related Azure AI services. You will partner with Enterprise Architecture, Cloud Engineering, Application Engineering, Security, and stakeholders to deliver secure, scalable AI capabilities across the enterprise.

You will lead platform standards, observability, data protection, cost optimization, and incident response, guiding senior engineers

Qualifications

• 8+ years of Azure APIM administration experience required.
• Bachelor's degree; Masters/MBA preferred.
• Leadership experience preferred.
• Knowledge of API security, OAuth, OpenID Connect, Managed Identities, Azure RBAC, and enterprise authentication frameworks.
• Experience with C#/Java/JavaScript/TypeScript or Python.
• Experience with Foundry, Azure AI Services, Azure OpenAI, AI Gateway technologies, or enterprise AI platform administration preferred.
• Experience deploying and managing MCP servers preferred.
• Knowledge of AI workload cost forecasting and optimization preferred.
• Advanced to expert knowledge in Financial Services or Banking preferred.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Occasional travel may be required.

Responsibilities

• Develop platform standards, reusable integration patterns, API policies, security controls, and governance frameworks.
• Design observability, monitoring, logging, and usage analytics for AI workloads and APIs.
• Partner with Enterprise Architecture on data protection and governance across the platform.
• Lead platform administration activities including provisioning, capacity planning, reliability, configuration management, incident response, and performance optimization.
• Establish engineering best practices for AI workload lifecycle, model deployment, API publishing, onboarding, and automation.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies and provide technical guidance for adoption.
• Act as technical lead, review plans and delegate implementation.

Skills

Azure APIM

API security

Leadership

Cloud architecture

Stakeholder communication

Programming: C#/Java/JS/Python

Education

Bachelor's degree

Masters or MBA preferred

Tools

Foundry

MCP servers

Azure AI Services

Azure OpenAI

Job description

Job Title:

Principal Engineer I – Foundry Administrator

Location:

Block 23

What you’ll do:

Principal Engineer I partners closely with Enterprise Architecture, Cloud Engineering, Application Engineering, Security, and business stakeholders to deliver secure, scalable, and reliable AI capabilities across the enterprise. This role is responsible for the strategy, architecture, governance, administration, and operational support of the enterprise AI Gateway platform built on Azure API Management (APIM), as well as Microsoft Foundry and related AI platform services. Responsibilities include enabling secure consumption of AI services, agents, large language models (LLMs), and MCP servers; exposing internal APIs, tools, and enterprise capabilities to AI agents and copilots; establishing API standards, governance frameworks, access controls, and AI usage policies; and ensuring platform availability, performance, security, compliance, cost optimization, and operational excellence. As a technical leader and subject matter expert, this position provides architectural direction, drives complex solution designs, develops technical standards and operational procedures, facilitates cross-functional collaboration, and effectively communicates technical strategies, risks, and business value to both technical teams and executive leadership.

• Develop and maintain platform standards, reusable integration patterns, API policies, security controls, and governance frameworks that enable business and technology teams to consume AI services safely and efficiently.
• Design and implement observability, monitoring, logging, and usage analytics solutions for AI workloads, APIs, agents, copilots, and model endpoints to ensure operational excellence and compliance.
• Partner with Enterprise Architecture to implement data protection, model governance, and responsible AI controls across the platform ecosystem.
• Lead platform administration activities including environment provisioning, capacity planning, service reliability, configuration management, incident response, and performance optimization, for Azure AI and Foundry services.
• Establish engineering best practices for AI workload lifecycle management, model deployment, API publishing, developer onboarding, and platform automation.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies, models, and platform capabilities, providing technical recommendations and implementation guidance to support enterprise AI adoption and innovation initiatives.
• Acting as the technical lead, review plans developed by other engineers & analysts, incorporate them into solution designs that are aligned with architectural principles & business objectives, and delegate implementation across the team.

What you’ll need:

• 8+ years of experience administering Azure API Management (APIM), including API lifecycle management, security policies, traffic governance, and enterprise integration patterns is required.
• Bachelor's degree in related field required; Masters or MBA in related field preferred.
• Previous leadership experience preferred.
• Knowledge of API security, OAuth, OpenID Connect, Managed Identities, Azure RBAC, network security, and enterprise authentication and authorization frameworks is required.
• Experience in programming languages (e.g. C#, Java, JavaScript/TypeScript or Python) is required.
• Experience with Microsoft Foundry, Azure AI Services, Azure OpenAI, AI Gateway technologies, or enterprise AI platform administration is preferred.
• Experience deploying and managing MCP servers is preferred.
• Knowledge of AI model selection, token utilization, credit-based consumption, capacity planning, and cost-optimization strategies for forecasting the long-term cost of enterprise AI workloads is preferred.
• Advanced to expert knowledge of general Financial Services or Banking is preferred.
• Advanced speaking and writing communication skills.
• Occasional travel may be required.

Benefits you’ll love:

• competitive salaries
• an ownership stake in the company
• medical and dental insurance
• time off
• a great 401k matching program
• tuition assistance program
• an employee volunteer program
• a wellness program
• opportunity to bolster your business knowledge
• learning the ins and outs of how successful companies operate and manage their finances
• hands‑on experience to help grow your career

About the company:

Western Alliance Bank, Member FDIC, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Alliance Bancorporation. Serving clients nationwide, Western Alliance Bank includes six legacy bank brands — Alliance Association Bank, Alliance Bank of Arizona, Bank of Nevada, Bridge Bank, First Independent Bank and Torrey Pines Bank — that remain part of the company’s heritage, as well as AmeriHome Mortgage, a Western Alliance Bank Company.

Western Alliance Bancorporation is committed to equal employment and will consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, sex, color, religion, age, nation origin, marital status, disability, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or genetic information. Western Alliance Bancorporation is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process and/or need an alternative method of applying, please email [e-mail] or call 602-386-2488. When contacting us, please provide your contact information and state the nature of your accessibility issue. We will only respond to inquiries concerning requests that involve a reasonable accommodation in the application process.

Western Alliance Bancorporation