Principal Software Engineer

InterContinental Hotels Group; Atlanta (GA); Hybrid; USD 190,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work arrangement

Job summary

InterContinental Hotels Group seeks a Principal Software Engineer to lead our AI discipline, shaping long-term architecture, platforms, and practices. You will mentor senior engineers and influence multiple teams and business units with scalable, secure AI solutions.

You will define strategy, prototype foundational platforms, and serve as the technical consultant on AI, guiding decisions and accelerating delivery across the organization.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in a relevant field or equivalent experience
• Typically 10+ years of progressive work-related experience with multi-disciplinary expertise
• Experience guiding multi-team development across dispersed teams
• Proven track record at Principal or equivalent level (Senior/Lead Staff Engineer, Architect)
• Demonstrated ability to set technical vision for multiple teams or an engineering department
• History of architecting and shipping large-scale AI systems with business impact
• Ability to translate strategy into a multi-year technical roadmap
• Experience presenting to executive leadership on complex topics
• Strong written and verbal communication skills for diverse audiences
• Background contributing to open-source projects or technical talks is a plus

Responsibilities

• Define and drive long-term AI strategy for the company
• Design foundational AI platforms and scalable core services
• Serve as lead technical consultant on AI for product and engineering teams
• tackle complex, cross-team R&D initiatives
• Mentor senior engineers and elevate architectural skills
• Establish best practices, design patterns, and engineering standards for AI

Skills

Technical leadership

AI architecture

Mentoring

Cross-team collaboration

Communication

Problem solving

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in a relevant field

Tools

Python

TensorFlow

PyTorch

LangChain

Hugging Face

GCP/AWS/Azure

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

A Principal Software Engineerserves as the foremost technical authority and strategic leader for our AI discipline. This is role is an engineer who combines profound technical expertise with the ability to influence and guide the entire organization's technical direction.

The Principal Software Engineer will be entrusted with our most complex, ambiguous, and highest-impact technical challenges. You will operate across multiple teams and business units, setting the long-term vision for our AI architecture, platforms, and practices. You will be a force-multiplier, mentoring our most senior technical talent and ensuring that the solutions we build today are the foundation for our market leadership tomorrow.

Your Day to Day:

• Define and drive the long-term technical strategy for AI at the company. Identify and champion new technological paradigms that create step-change opportunities and sustainable competitive advantages.

• Design, and prototype foundational AI platforms, frameworks, and core services that will be leveraged by engineering teams across the entire organization. Your designs will set the standard for scalability, security, and innovation.

• Act as the lead technical consultant on AI for all product and engineering teams. Influence architectural decisions, development practices, and technology choices to ensure a cohesive and forward-looking technical ecosystem.

• Tackle the most complex and mission-critical technical problems that are beyond the scope of a single team. This includes pioneering new model architectures, solving novel systems-level problems, and leading high-risk, high-reward R&D initiatives.

• Act as a dedicated mentor and role model for our Lead and Senior engineers. Grow the next generation of technical leaders by elevating the architectural and design skills across the company.

• Establish and evangelize best practices, design patterns, and engineering standards for AI development, from model training and deployment to ethics and reliability.

What We Need From You:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in a relevant field of work or an equivalent combination of education and work-related experience.

• Typically, a minimum of 10+ years of progressive work-related experience with demonstrated proficiency in multiple disciplines, technologies, or processes related to the position.

• Experience working with a set of geographically dispersed team and bringing a holistic view of development projects.

• A distinguished career with extensive experience in software engineering and AI, with a proven track record of operating at a Principal or equivalent level (e.g., Senior/Lead Staff Engineer, Architect).
• Recognized as a technical leader with experience setting the technical vision for multiple teams or an entire engineering department.
• Verifiable history of architecting, building, and shipping large-scale, mission-critical AI systems that have delivered significant business impact.
• Deep experience navigating ambiguity and translating high-level business or product strategy into a concrete, multi-year technical roadmap.
• Experience presenting to and influencing executive leadership (VPs, CTO, CPO) on complex technical topics.

Technical Skill & Knowledge

• Expert understanding of modern AI concepts, including Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and agentic workflows.
• Proven ability to reason about and architect solutions using the Google Gemini family of models and their underlying infrastructure is highly preferred.
• Expert-level proficiency in Python and common AI/ML libraries (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch, LangChain, Hugging Face).
• Expert experience with a major cloud provider (GCP, AWS, Azure), including their AI/ML services. Familiarity with MLOps principles and tools for CI/CD, model deployment, and monitoring.
• Solid understanding of microservices architecture, API design (e.g., REST, gRPC), and containerization technologies (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes).
• World-class ability to design highly scalable, fault-tolerant, and elegant distributed systems. You don't just use the cloud; you architect for it.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Ability to display effective verbal and written communication skills when explaining complex technical issues to a variety of technical audiences, including clients, vendors, senior management and staff.
• A history of contributions to open-source projects, publications in reputable conferences, or speaking at technical events is a strong plus.
• Ability to establish and maintain a high level of customer trust and confidence in the software engineering team’s knowledge of the customer’s business needs.
• Understands and implements work effectively utilizing agile best practices.

Travel -10%

Location -Our hybrid work structure is an expectation of three (3) days a week inoffice. This expectation may be adjusted to evolve with the changing needs of the business.