AI Software Engineer

Principal AI Software Engineer | Contract to Hire Insight Global is seeking a Principal AI Software Engineer to join a global energy technology client in their Advanced Research Center in Niskayuna, NY. This is a senior-level engineering role focused on architecting, building, and scaling enterprise AI products in production environments. The ideal candidate combines deep software engineering expertise with hands‑on AI/LLM experience and has successfully owned products throughout the full lifecycle, from architecture and deployment through ongoing support, optimization, and operational excellence.This individual will drive technical vision across multiple AI initiatives, partnering with product, data science, and engineering leaders to develop secure, scalable, high‑availability AI solutions leveraging LLMs, AI agents, NLP, computer vision, predictive analytics, and modern cloud architectures. Key Responsibilities: Define AI architecture and technical strategy across multiple products and business initiatives Design and build enterprise‑scale AI applications utilizing LLMs, RAG architectures, AI agents, and orchestration frameworks Lead cross‑functional initiatives with product, engineering, and data science teams Architect highly available, multi‑tenant systems with strong observability, monitoring, and security practices Establish standards for AI governance, cost optimization, monitoring, testing, and performance management Mentor engineers and influence technical direction across teams and organizations Drive technical roadmap planning and large‑scale architecture decisions Support products post‑deployment, ensuring scalability, reliability, security, and operational excellence Qualifications: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical field 10+ years of software engineering experience Strong backend engineering experience with Python preferred; additional experience with Java, Node.js, or Go Experience with modern front‑end frameworks such as React, Angular, or Vue Proven track record building, deploying, and supporting AI/LLM‑enabled applications in production at scale Experience designing and implementing RAG architectures, AI agents, and LLM orchestration frameworks such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, or similar custom frameworks Hands‑on experience with vector databases such as Pinecone, Milvus, Weaviate, pgvector, or similar technologies Strong cloud experience in AWS, Azure, or GCP Experience with containerized environments and Kubernetes/EKS Demonstrated success leading technical teams, mentoring engineers, driving architectural decisions, and influencing cross‑functional initiatives Experience owning products beyond deployment, including monitoring, observability, scalability, security, and production support Exact compensation varies based on overall experience and skill level. #J-18808-Ljbffr Insight Global