Principal AI Engineer

Role Description

DrFirst is building an agentic ecosystem at scale. In the last 90 days we have shipped production AI systems across HR, Finance, Legal, and Marketing, automating hundreds of hours of manual work monthly and delivering measurable business impact.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You architect and build production AI automation systems from discovery to deployment. You work directly with department leaders to map workflows and ship tools that augment their work.

• 80% individual-contributor engineering and 20% servant leadership and mentorship.
• You build and own technical architecture decisions.
• Mentor through code review and pairing as the team scales from 2 to 5-6 engineers over 18 months.
• Teach non-technical department leaders how to use AI tools and translate technical concepts for executives.
• Run discovery sessions that extract workflows from stakeholders.

Qualifications

• 8+ years building production systems end-to-end (backend, frontend, integrations, infrastructure).
• Staff/Principal Engineer or Tech Lead experience, owning technical decisions on production systems.
• Shipped SaaS products with OAuth2, multi-tenancy, audit trails, and enterprise compliance.
• Deep AI/ML experience: production systems using LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock) and agent frameworks.
• Production Python: FastAPI, Pydantic, pytest (1000+ test suite experience).
• Production TypeScript/React: Next.js App Router, server components, Okta/NextAuth SSO, Playwright testing.
• AWS and Kubernetes: EKS operations, GitLab CI/CD, ArgoCD, Helm, Secrets Manager.
• Enterprise security patterns: Zscaler proxies, SSL certificates, Kubernetes networking, JWKS verification.
• Healthcare or regulated industry experience (HIPAA, SOC 2, or similar frameworks).
• Strong communication skills: run discovery sessions with non-technical stakeholders, explain security trade-offs to executives, and write architecture docs department leaders can follow.
• Servant leadership mindset: remove blockers for others, teach through questions not directives, and make stakeholders successful first.
• Thrives in organized chaos: 15 stakeholders, 6 systems, 3 sprints in flight.
• Bias toward shipping: “good enough to get feedback” beats “perfect in 3 months.”
• Highly collaborative: challenges ideas constructively and welcomes being challenged.

Requirements

• Guide 2-3 engineers through code reviews and pairing.
• Teach department leaders how to use AI tools effectively.
• Translate technical decisions for non-technical executives.
• No direct reports and no performance reviews.
• Clear obstacles for team members, escalate infrastructure issues, and coordinate across departments.
• Document patterns so others can self-serve and write playbooks department heads can follow without engineering help.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation, with a base salary of $175,000 - $200,000 (Exact compensation may vary based on skills and experience).
• Eligible for Company Performance-based Bonus Program, based on individual and company performance.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• 401K eligible after 3 months of employment, with 50% company match up to first 5% of salary contributed to the plan with a 3-year vesting schedule.
• HSA for eligible employees enrolled in the HDHP, with a generous company contribution up to $500 for individual coverage and $1000 for family coverage per year.
• 100% company paid short and long-term disability, AD&D, and group life insurance.
• Accrued annual paid time off (PTO) of 18 days for the first 3 years of service, increasing thereafter and 7 paid holiday days.
• Employee Assistance Program.
• Continuing Education funds up to $1500 annually for eligible programs after 1 year of service.
• Voluntary benefits including FSA, Hospital indemnity, Accident and Critical Illness insurances.