Senior Principal - AI Accelerated Engineering Lead

Slalom; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Subsidized health, dental, & vision coverage

401(k) with match

Paid holidays and meaningful time off

Adoption and fertility assistance

Job summary

Slalom is seeking an AI Accelerated Engineering Lead in Washington, DC to guide teams in AI-driven software development.

The role involves overseeing discovery and delivery, mentoring engineers, and leading the adoption of AI practices to enhance client solutions.

Qualified candidates will have 8+ years in software development and experience with generative AI. Benefits include competitive compensation, paid time off, and health coverage.

Qualifications

• Ability to lead teams, mentor engineers, and articulate value to technical and business audiences.
• 8+ years building and operating production software.
• Daily use of agentic IDEs and advanced tooling.
• Experience delivering solutions with generative AI.
• Deep knowledge of APIs, microservices, and security.
• Proficiency in languages like TypeScript/Node, Python, or Java.
• Strong background with cloud services and DevOps practices.

Responsibilities

• Oversee discovery, delivery, and implementation planning.
• Provide technical leadership and support for growth.
• Design flows and guardrails that integrate generative AI.
• Manage environments where AI agents and engineers collaborate.
• Build and codify repeatable practices for AI-enabled platforms.
• Coach teams and translate AI concepts into business outcomes.

Skills

Leadership & communication

Experience with production software

Hands-on AI-accelerated development

Proven track record with GenAI integration

Architecture expertise

Programming skills

Cloud & DevOps

Tools

GitHub Copilot

Cursor

Claude Code

AWS

Azure

GCP

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Job description

Overview

As a AI Accelerated Engineering Lead, you will guide teams in the shift toward AI-accelerated engineering and define clear guardrails for how generative AI supports software delivery. You will also own the architecture of client solutions while pioneering the next generation of AI-empowered software development. You’ll lead teams in adopting AI-first engineering practices - bringing clarity, structure, and guardrails to how organizations build with generative AI.

What You’ll Work With

You’ll join atightly knit product team-engineers, product leaders, designers, and data practitioners-whoco-createmodern software with our customers. We move from discovery to delivery together, pairing on code, pressure-testing ideas with real users, and turning learnings into ship-ready increments. You’ll collaborate with customer stakeholders and field teams to bring outside-in insights into the roadmap, and you’ll helpenable clientson the practices and tools we use so they can sustain value long after launch. Thinkcraft-driven Builderswho care about outcomes, not just output.

What You’ll Do

The AI Accelerated Engineering Lead balances their time between being an effective people leader and setting the technical direction in the delivery of some of our most challenging engagements. You are the advocate for your direct reports. You will develop strong, lasting relationships with each of them as you identify the perfect project match for their skills and objectives. You will partner with clients to understand the most complex technical and functional challenges they are facing. As you iterate on solutions with clients, you will develop implementation and delivery plans that take advantage of emerging technologies at scale. You will coordinate with other capabilities and technical leads in order to ensure that world-class user experiences are understood, validation procedures are aligned, and automation components are delivered. You will help in the pursuit of new business opportunities as a technical expert, detailing proposals for how we would approach delivery. Your expertise in designing and developing holistic software solutions will benefit the rest of Slalom and Build capability as you lead communities and provide mentorship to other Builders. Specifically, you will:

• Lead delivery and implementation: Oversee discovery, delivery, and implementation planning across multiple value streams and ensure teams ship high quality software using clear, repeatable approaches.
• Guide people and technical direction: Support direct reports in their growth, provide technical leadership in pursuits, and contribute knowledge that strengthens engineering practices across Slalom.
• Redefine the AI-first SDLC:Design flows, patterns, and guardrails that integrate generative AI from ideation through operations.
• Lead with context engineering:Apply and guide strategies like prompt templating, embeddings, retrieval-augmented generation, and data grounding to ensure AI-driven development is accurate, reliable, and safe.
• Manage GenAI-driven teams:Orchestrate multi-developer environments where AI agents and engineers work side by side-ensuring productivity, quality, and responsible adoption.
• Ship AI-enabled platforms:Build and codify repeatable practices such as evaluation harnesses, code-review agents, context packs, and CI/CD hooks.
• Stay hands-on:Own product architecture while prototyping and hardening AI-driven solutions using modern DevOps and observability practices.
• Enable and transform:Coach teams and client stakeholders on AI-accelerated ways of working; translate complex AI concepts into clear business outcomes.

What You’ll Bring

• Leadership & communication:Ability to lead teams, mentor engineers, and articulate value to both technical and business audiences.
• Experience:8+ years building and operating production software, with proven leadership in system or platform architecture.
• Hands-on AI-accelerated development:Daily use of agentic IDEs and advanced tooling (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code) beyond basic chat interfaces.
• Proven track record with GenAI integration:Experience delivering solutions where multiple developers collaborated with generative AI and AI agents using context engineering strategies.
• Architecture expertise:Deep knowledge of APIs, microservices, eventing, reliability, and security.
• Programming skills:Proficiency in languages like TypeScript/Node, Python, or Java; comfort with React/Next and modern frameworks.
• Cloud & DevOps:Strong background with AWS/Azure/GCP, Kubernetes, CI/CD, IaC, and production observability.
• Bonus Skills
• MLOps, AI governance, or safety practices.
• Contributions to open source or thought leadership in AI-accelerated engineering.

About Us

Slalom is a fiercely human business and technology consulting company that leads with outcomes to bring more value, in all ways, always. From strategy through delivery, our agile teams across 52 offices in 12 countries collaborate with clients to bring powerful customer experiences, innovative ways of working, and new products and services to life. We are trusted by leaders across the Global 1000, many successful enterprise and mid-market companies, and 500+ public sector organizations to improve operations, drive growth, and create value. At Slalom, we believe that together, we can move faster, dream bigger, and build better tomorrows for all.

Compensation and Benefits

Slalom prides itself on helping team members thrive in their work and life. As a result, Slalom is proud to invest in benefits that includemeaningful time off and paid holidays, parental leave, 401(k) with a match, a range of choices for highly subsidized health, dental, & vision coverage, adoption and fertility assistance, and short/long-term disability. We also offer yearly $350 reimbursement account for any well-being-related expenses, as well as discounted home, auto, and pet insurance.

Slalom is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. For this role, we are hiring at these locations:

Washington DC

In addition, individuals may be eligible for an annual discretionary bonus. Actual compensation will depend upon an individual’s skills, experience, qualifications, location, and other relevant factors. The salary pay range is subject to change and may be modified at any time.

EEO and Accommodations

Slalom is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to attracting, developing and retaining highly qualified talent who empower our innovative teams through unique perspectives and experiences. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veterans’ status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws. Slalom will also consider qualified applications with criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. Slalom welcomes and encourages applications from individuals with disabilities. Reasonable accommodations are available for candidates during all aspects of the selection process. Please advise the talent acquisition team or contact [e-mail] if you require accommodations during the interview process.