Principal Platform Engineer – Applied AI (Remote)

First American Financial; New York (NY); Remote; USD 130,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading financial services firm is seeking a Principal Applied-AI Platform Engineer to lead a delivery team in building AI-powered solutions. The ideal candidate will have extensive platform engineering experience and a strong focus on operational excellence. Responsibilities include driving technical decisions, enhancing platform workflows, and shipping impactful AI solutions. This role supports remote work and offers a comprehensive benefits package.

Benefits

Medical benefits

401k plan

Employee stock purchase plan

Qualifications

• 7+ years of platform engineering or DevOps experience.
• Proven track record of enhancing platform operations using AI.
• Hands-on experience with agentic workflows and server integrations.

Responsibilities

• Drive enterprise-wide technical decisions through AI empowerment.
• Design AI-enhanced capabilities for platform workflows.
• Ship AI solutions that improve operational metrics.

Skills

Platform engineering expertise

DevOps experience

AI solution implementation

Cloud services (AWS/GCP/Azure)

Containerization (Docker)

Infrastructure-as-code

Strong communication skills

Tools

Terraform

CloudFormation

Ansible

Job description

Who We Are

Join a team that puts its People First! Since 1889, First American (NYSE: FAF) has held an unwavering belief in its people. They are passionate about what they do, and we are equally passionate about fostering an environment where all feel welcome, supported, and empowered to be innovative and reach their full potential.

Our inclusive, people-first culture has earned our company numerous accolades, including being named to the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list for ten consecutive years. We have also earned awards as a best place to work for women, diversity and LGBTQ+ employees, and have been included on more than 50 regional best places to work lists.

What We Do

Remote Work Welcome. Be part of a transformative team shaping how First American builds and delivers AI technology capabilities to enhance our Platform Engineering and Technical Services groups.

We are looking for the best-of-the-best technology experts who envision, design, build, and deliver innovative solutions that provide exceptional experiences and lasting value to the company.

Job Description

First American is seeking Principal Applied-AI Platform Engineer candidates to grow our team. The ideal candidate has strong technical expertise, a product mindset, and takes a hands-on approach to leading a team building high-quality, sustainable AI-powered solutions.

As a Principal Applied-AI Platform Engineer, you will lead a small, focused platform engineering delivery team to drive initiatives and build fast, clean, resilient solutions in AI-automation and intelligence capabilities, enhance operational excellence, reduce toil, and amplify the impact of AI across our organization.

Responsibilities:

• Technical Leadership: Drive enterprise-wide technical decisions and deliver organizational transformation through AI-empowerment. Mentor and develop talent for a team of senior engineers, providing technical leadership.
• Lead AI-Powered Platform Solutions: Design and build AI-enhanced capabilities for platform engineering workflows including intelligent monitoring, automated incident response, and predictive capacity planning.
• Deliver Production Impact: Ship AI solutions that measurably improve operational metrics including MTTR reduction, toil automation, incident prevention, and engineering productivity improvement.
• Collaborate/Partner: Work in tandem with our product teams and leaders to identify and implement optimal AI solutions throughout our Platform Engineering and Technical Services groups within the company.
• Operational Excellence: Design and lead the development of high-quality, secure, and observable solutions. Create frameworks, libraries, and patterns that accelerate AI adoption across the organization and enable teams to extend solutions independently.
• Continuous Improvement: Manage the team in achieving ambitious goals, providing regular feedback, and driving continuous improvement.

Requirements:

• 7+ years of platform engineering or DevOps experience with deep expertise in SRE principles, DevOps practices, and operational workflows.
• Proven track record of enhancing platform and IT operations capabilities using AI.
• Hands-on experience using agentic workflows and MCP server integrations.
• Expert-level experience with at least one major cloud provider (AWS/GCP/Azure), containerized development (Docker), and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CloudFormation, Ansible).
• Experience driving engineering best practices for high-functioning Platform Engineering teams through effective use of tools and automation.
• Passion and expertise for integration with back-end services and APIs using modern architectures and authentication mechanisms (Oauth).
• A strong understanding of both software engineering and DevOps principles and modern infrastructure operations.
• Ability to build robust, high-scale, generic, and reusable solutions.
• Ability to lead, mentor, and influence Platform and DevOps Engineers to share knowledge and improve quality.
• Ability to unblock yourself and help accelerate the team in achieving their goals.
• Familiarity with deployment and observability strategies that support continuous delivery and high availability in a cloud-native environment.
• An outcome-oriented approach using metrics and data to understand development productivity metrics that inform areas for continuous improvement.
• Effective verbal and written communication skills, with strong relationship, collaborative, and organizational skills.

What We Offer

By choice, we don’t simply accept individuality – we embrace it, we support it, and we thrive on it! Our People First Culture celebrates diversity, equity and inclusion not simply because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it’s the key to our success.

We are proud to foster an authentic and inclusive workplace For All. You are free and encouraged to bring your entire, unique self to work. First American is an equal opportunity employer in every sense of the term.

Based on eligibility, First American offers a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, 401k, PTO/paid sick leave and other great benefits like an employee stock purchase plan.