Senior Software Engineer II – Enterprise AI Consulting & Embedded Experts

Principal Financial Services, Inc.; Iowa (LA); On-site; USD 127,000 - 152,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible Time Off

Pension eligibility

Bonus program for non-sales positions

Job summary

Principal Financial Services, Inc. is seeking a Senior Software Engineer II for their AI Enablement product family. This role focuses on partnering with teams to drive AI adoption and business value across the enterprise.

You will act as a trusted advisor and technical expert, helping design AI solutions, contributing to reusable capabilities, and mentoring teams.

A competitive salary range of $127,000 to $152,000 per year is offered along with flexible time off and a hybrid work environment.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of engineering experience, including distributed systems.
• Experience in complex environments with multiple stakeholders.
• Strong ability to operate in ambiguity and switch from strategy to hands-on.

Responsibilities

• Partner with teams to identify high-impact AI use cases.
• Act as embedded engineer to accelerate AI solution design.
• Contribute to reusable AI platforms and architectures.

Skills

Building and scaling distributed systems

AI/ML or GenAI solutions development

Cloud platforms (AWS)

Excellent communication skills

Tools

LLMOps

MLOps

Evaluation frameworks

Job description

What You'll Do

We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer II to join our AI Enablement product family within the Consulting & Embedded Experts team. In this role, you will operate as a trusted technical advisor and hands‑on engineer, partnering directly with product and business teams to accelerate the safe, secure, and scalable adoption of AI across the enterprise.

Rather than owning a single product, you will embed with teams, shape solutions, and help scale AI capability through reusable patterns, platforms, and accelerators aligned to enterprise strategy.

Drive AI Adoption & Business Value

• Partner with product and business teams to identify and deliver high‑impact AI use cases aligned to enterprise priorities
• Translate ambiguous business problems into practical, production‑ready AI solutions
• Focus on delivering value aligned to measurable outcomes and ROI

Embed with Teams as a Technical Expert

• Act as an embedded engineer/architect within delivery teams to accelerate AI solution design and implementation
• Bridge the gap between central AI enablement capabilities and domain‑specific business needs
• Collaborate in a federated operating model, enabling teams while maintaining enterprise standards

Build & Scale Reusable AI Capabilities

• Contribute to and leverage enterprise AI platforms, MLOps/LLMOps capabilities, and reusable accelerators
• Create reusable patterns (eg RAG architectures, evaluation frameworks, guardrails) that reduce time‑to‑market and cost
• Help drive critical mass adoption of AI platforms across engineering teams

Ensure Safe, Secure, and Sustainable AI

• Design AI solutions that meet enterprise standards for security, governance, and responsible AI
• Implement guardrails, evaluation strategies, and monitoring to ensure trusted AI outcomes and customer protection
• Champion sustainable engineering practices including reusability, scalability, and governance alignment

Shape Technical Direction & Capability Maturity

• Assess emerging AI technologies and guide teams on when and how to adopt them responsibly
• Help teams move up the AI maturity curve—from point solutions to enterprise‑scale, embedded AI capabilities
• Influence architecture decisions that enable long‑term transformation, not just short‑term delivery

Enable & Elevate Others

• Mentor engineers and product teams on AI best practices, architecture, and delivery approaches
• Act as a force multiplier, enabling teams rather than becoming a bottleneck
• Contribute to internal knowledge sharing, playbooks, and AI community building (eg demos, patterns, guidance)

About AI Enablement

Our mission is to drive enterprise AI innovation through scalable platforms, reusable patterns, and strategic implementation, empowering teams to deliver secure, high‑value AI solutions at scale.

We focus on:

• Expanding workforce adoption of AI through accessible, secure capabilities
• Providing engineer‑friendly platforms and patterns to accelerate delivery
• Delivering business‑aligned use cases that create measurable value

Who You Are

• 8+ years of engineering experience, including building and scaling distributed systems
• Experience working in complex, matrixed environments with multiple stakeholders
• Strong ability to operate in ambiguity and move between strategy and hands‑on delivery
• Proven ability to influence without authority and drive adoption across teams
• Excellent communication skills—able to translate between technical and business audiences

Skills That Will Help You Stand Out

• Experience building AI/ML or GenAI solutions in production environments
• Familiarity with LLMOps, MLOps, evaluation frameworks, and AI guardrails
• Experience with cloud platforms (eg AWS) and modern data/AI architectures
• Background in solution architecture, consulting, or platform engineering
• Experience building reusable frameworks, accelerators, or internal platforms

Salary Range Information

Salary ranges below reflect targeted base salaries. Non‑sales positions have the opportunity to participate in a bonus program. Sales positions are eligible for sales incentives, and in some instances a bonus plan, whereby total compensation may far exceed base salary depending on individual performance. Actual compensation for all roles will be based upon geographic location, work experience, education, licensure requirements and/or skill level and will be finalized at the time of offer.

Salary Range

127000 - 152000 / year

Time Off Program

Flexible Time Off (FTO) is provided to salaried (exempt) employees and provides the opportunity to take time away from the office with pay for vacation, personal or short‑term illness. Employees don’t accrue a bank of time off under FTO and there is no set number of days provided.

Pension Eligible

Yes

Work Environment

This role offers in‑office and hybrid (blending at least three office days in a typical workweek), in Des Moines, IA or Charlotte, NC. You’ll work with your leader to figure out which option may align best based on several factors.

Hours

This role will partner with our global teams and has an expectation for flexibility in your work schedule to have a regular start time around 7:30‑8:00 am CST a few days a week.

Work Authorization/Sponsorship

At this time, we’re not considering candidates that need any type of immigration sponsorship now or in the future or those needing work authorization for this role. (This includes, but is not limited to students on F1‑OPT, F1‑CPT, J‑1, etc.)

Equal Opportunity Employer

Principal is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.