AI Principal Engineer

Role Description

As a Principal AI/ML engineer, this technical leader will be responsible for the design and implementation of the cloud-native AI/ML engineering platform (supporting both GenAI and traditional AI/ML technology and applications). This technologist will drive the technology development and architecture in these areas to ensure the platforms, systems, tools, models, and services generated from this team are technically sound with strong security, quality, reliability, usability, scalability, performance, efficiency, and operability to serve the fast growing needs of Wex and customers.

This Principal AI/ML Engineer will have technical ownership of WEX’s AI Engineering implementation, including but not limited to architecture, technical direction, engineering best practice, and quality/compliance. This also includes proper and effective architectural integration with other platforms, products, and services across the company.

The vision behind Wex’s AI/ML engineering is to create a unified, scalable, and intelligent data and compute infrastructure that empowers our organization to unlock the full potential of our data.

We are looking for a highly motivated, technically deep, and experienced Software Engineer to join the org and design, architect the AI/ML engineering applications and frameworks for Wex.

This Principal AI/ML Engineer will report to the Vice President of Data Lake and AI Engineering located in the San Francisco Bay Area. This role can also be in Chicago, Portland, Maine (Wex HQ), or Boston.

Responsibilities

• Lead and drive the development of technology and platform for the company's AI/ML engineering needs, ensuring functional richness, reliability, performance, and flexibility.
• Help design the architecture and lead the implementation of the AI/ML infrastructure, platform, and services.
• Challenge the status quo and hold a high bar to drive for better technical solutions.
• Guide your team to leverage data and/or AI technology or tools for high productivity and better solution quality.
• Closely partner with other senior engineers to understand business needs and develop technical solutions.
• Partner with information security teams to ensure data security and privacy.
• Collaborate with solutions architecture and LOB product and engineering orgs on integrations of the AI/ML Platform.
• Engage with external partners and vendors to evaluate complementary technologies and services.
• Create, prioritize, communicate, manage, and execute roadmaps, project plans, and commitments.
• Report on the status of development, quality, operations, and system performance.
• Drive the technical vision and strategy of AI/ML infrastructure.
• Set a high bar and provide technical guidance and mentorship to engineering teams.
• Set clear, measurable quality goals for your group in a data-driven way.
• Partner with security and SRE orgs to ensure continuous improvement and meet security requirements.
• Take strong financial responsibility for your team.
• Advise Senior Leadership on complex situations impacting the organization.
• Provide strategic thought leadership on business initiatives.

Qualifications

• 15-20 years of software design and development experience at a large scale.
• Strong software development skills in chosen programming language; willing to learn Java and Python.
• Experience in building machine learning supervised and unsupervised models; Reinforcement Learning is a plus.
• Experience in using LLM models is a plus.
• Broad understanding of distributed computing frameworks like Ray and Spark.
• Demonstrable experience in Kubernetes and Terraform.
• Experience with Sagemaker is a plus.
• Broad understanding of cloud architecture tools and services, such as S3, EMR, Kubernetes, Lambda functions; experience in AWS and Azure is highly desirable.
• Deep technical expertise in architecture design, development, deployment, and production operation.
• Rich experience and deep expertise in Big Data and large scale data platforms, especially in AI and ML.
• Highly experienced in CI/CD automation.
• Excellent analytical skills; capable of identifying and resolving complex problems.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field; a higher degree is a plus.

Leadership & Personal Characteristics

• Demonstrates a collaborative, engaging, mission-driven style with good listening skills.
• Champions a culture of high standards and embraces change.
• Able to operate in a fast-paced entrepreneurial environment with a hands-on approach.
• Communicates effectively in small and large group formats.
• Possesses a high level of intellectual curiosity and learning agility.
• Understands nuance and drives change through influence.

Benefits

• Health, dental, and vision insurances.
• Retirement savings plan.
• Paid time off.
• Health savings account.
• Flexible spending accounts.
• Life insurance.
• Disability insurance.
• Tuition reimbursement.

Pay Range

$250,300.00 - $289,000.00