Principal AI Platform Engineer

Empowered to live. Inspired to work.
Compeer Financial is a member-owned cooperative located in Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin. We bring together team members with a variety of backgrounds and experiences to help provide financial services to support agriculture and rural communities. Join us in a culture that not only promotes meaningful work and professional development, but provides a flexible, hybrid work environment and excellent benefits, which empower you to thrive both personally and professionally.

How we support you:

• Hybrid model - up to 50% work from home
• Flexible schedules including ample flexibility in the summer months
• Up to 9% towards 401k (3% fixed Compeer contribution plus up to 6% match)
• Benefits: medical, dental, vision, HSA/FSA, life & AD&D insurance, short-term and long-term disability, wellness program & EAP
• Vacation, sick leave, holidays/floating holidays, parental leave, and volunteer paid time off
• Learning and development programs
• Mentorship programs
• Cross-functional committee opportunities (i.e. Inclusion Council, emerging professional groups, etc.)
• Professional membership/certification reimbursement and more!

Casual/seasonal & intern team members are not eligible for benefits except for state-mandated programs.

To learn more about Compeer Financial visit

Where you will work: This position offers a hybrid work option up to 50% and is open to any Compeer office location in Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The contributions you will make: The highest-level individual contributor in the software engineering career framework, providing enterprise technical leadership across portfolios, products, platforms, and transformation initiatives, with a focus on leading and expanding responsible AI use across the organization. Sets enterprise AI Enablement Platform direction and partnering with Enterprise Architecture and AI Risk governance workgroup. Connects AI technology platform strategy to enterprise needs, risks, and measurable enterprise value. Advances AI-enabled engineering and Agentic AI at scale, building tools and platforms that make AI adoption safe, repeatable, and accessible. Serves as a trusted advisor to senior technology and business leaders and models the behaviors that strengthen Compeer's engineering culture.

A typical day:

• Leads AI platform engineering and adoption by building enterprise AI platforms, tools, services, and integrations for LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation, vector search, agents, Model Context Protocol, and AI-assisted and agentic software development.
• Establishes AI operational excellence through reusable components and guardrails, evaluation frameworks, monitoring, cost and performance management, output validation, production support, and responsible scaling of AI tools and agents.
• Partners on AI governance and risk with Risk Management, Information Security, Legal, Compliance, and Data Governance, translating requirements into access controls, data protection, model and vendor risk management, human oversight, auditability, and use-case risk tiering.
• Owns AI-enabled and Agentic AI engineering delivery for the most strategic and ambiguous software initiatives from discovery through sustained operation, making significant cross-boundary technical decisions and remaining accountable for quality, security, reliability, scalability, and production performance.
• Develops engineers and technical leaders through mentoring, communities of practice, training, and reusable guidance on AI-assisted development, prompt and context engineering, responsible AI, agentic development, and critical evaluation of AI-generated output.
• Advances technical mastery and engineering excellence across architecture, distributed systems, integration, cloud-native engineering, DevSecOps, testing, CI/CD, security, observability, and reliability while evaluating emerging technologies through experimentation and evidence.
• Connects engineering to business outcomes by translating Compeer's strategy, client needs, regulatory obligations, and risk into engineering strategies, investment options, build-versus-buy decisions, high-value AI opportunities, and multi-year roadmaps.
• Leads across organizational boundaries by partnering with engineering, architecture, product, security, data, operations, quality, risk, and business leaders
• Influences without authority, resolving conflicts and dependencies, and communicating risks and trade-offs clearly.

The skills and experience we prefer you have:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related discipline, or equivalent experience, with extensive experience designing, building, and operating complex, business-critical software, distributed systems, and platforms.
• Hands-on experience designing and building AI applications and platforms using LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation, vector search, agent orchestration, Model Context Protocol, and cloud AI services such as Azure OpenAI or Azure AI Foundry.
• Experience scaling responsible AI-enabled engineering and Agentic AI across the software lifecycle, prompt and model versioning, quality and safety testing, cost and performance monitoring, production support, and validation of AI-generated outcomes.
• Working knowledge of responsible AI and AI governance, model and vendor risk management, privacy, bias and fairness, auditability, human oversight, sensitive-data protection, and translating governance requirements into practical technical controls; experience in financial services, agriculture, or another regulated industry is preferred.
• Experience leading complex solution design and strategic technical decisions across multiple portfolios, products, systems, or business domains, including architecture, integration, technology trade-offs, engineering strategy, standards, governance, and target-state architecture.
• Distinguished software engineering expertise across application development, APIs and integration, cloud-native and event-driven architectures, data, security, platforms, DevSecOps, testing, CI/CD, observability, reliability, and operational excellence.
• Ability to analyze highly complex problems, anticipate second- and third-order effects, balance technical, security, regulatory, operational, and investment trade-offs, and connect engineering decisions to Compeer's strategy, client needs, enterprise value, and durable multi-year direction.
• Exceptional communication, influence, leadership, and learning agility, including the ability to advise executives and governance bodies, constructively challenge assumptions, resolve cross-organizational dependencies, mentor senior technical talent, and rapidly evaluate and responsibly adopt emerging technologies.

How we will take care of you:

Our job titles may span more than one career level (associate, senior, principal, etc.). The actual title and base pay offered is dependent upon many factors, such as: training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs and market demands. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. This role is eligible for variable compensation and other benefits.

Base Pay $133,000—$180,000 USD

Compeer Financial is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Must be authorized to work for any employer in the United States. Compeer is unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa at this time.

Click here to view federal employment laws applicable for applicants.