Remote Principal AI Platform Engineer — Agentic Automation

Confluent; Springfield (IL); Remote; USD 285,000 - 342,000; Full time

Job summary

Confluent is seeking a strategic and hands-on leader to define and drive internal agentic AI capabilities, partnering across Engineering, Security, and IT to scale AI usage and automate workflows that boost R&D productivity.

You will blend hands-on execution with strategy, leading cross-functional programs to create measurable business value while promoting responsible AI practices and governance.

Qualifications

• 8+ years driving strategic productivity initiatives in SaaS/Cloud environments.
• Expert in building distributed systems and the infra to support them.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams and influence senior stakeholders.
• Strong communicator who translates complex technical strategies into impact-oriented outcomes.
• Hands-on experience with AI/ML platforms and automation, with appetite for agentic patterns.
• Deep understanding of responsible AI practices and governance.
• Ability to tie technical efforts to business KPIs (adoption, ROI, revenue impact).

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 engineering.
• Identify and resolve bottlenecks across the product and software development lifecycle.
• 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 60% execution and 40% strategy setting.
• Drive measurable adoption of AI tooling and flows with internal teams.
• Adopt industry standards, ethical frameworks, guardrails, and quality metrics for AI behavior.
• Define success metrics and KPIs (AI-driven usage lift, automation ROI, reduction in manual workflows).
• Participate in external forums—conferences, podcasts, customer briefings as needed.
• Evolve as the technology landscape shifts.
• Write internal playbooks for scaling agentic outcomes.

Skills

AI initiatives

Distributed systems

Leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Strategic planning

KPIs & ROI

LLM integration

Cloud platforms

Tools

LLM integration

Workflow automation

Real-time data platforms

Job description

Confluent is seeking a strategic and hands-on leader to define and drive internal agentic AI capabilities, partnering across Engineering, Security, and IT to scale AI usage and automate workflows that boost R&D productivity.

You will blend hands-on execution with strategy, leading cross-functional programs to create measurable business value while promoting responsible AI practices and governance.