Associate Principal, AI Engineering

Location: San Diego, CA Summary Associate Principal, AI Engineer is a senior technical leader who partners with Principal Architects, business stakeholders, and engineering teams to translate enterprise strategy into scalable, AI‑enabled technology solutions. The role blends deep hands‑on technical depth across full‑stack engineering, cloud platforms, and modern AI architectures with leadership presence to influence cross‑functional teams and shape long‑range technology direction. Key Responsibilities Architecture and Technical Strategy Define reference architectures, design patterns, and platform standards for AI‑enabled enterprise applications spanning web, mobile, and backend services. Partner with the Principal Architect to develop multi‑year technology roadmaps aligned with business objectives. Evaluate emerging technologies—foundation models, agentic frameworks, vector databases, MLOps tooling—and translate them into actionable adoption plans. Lead architectural reviews to ensure scalability, security, performance, observability, and cost of ownership. AI and Generative AI Engineering Architect Design Generative AI solutions including RAG systems, multi‑agent workflows, conversational interfaces, and domain‑specific fine‑tuned models. Architect responsible AI frameworks covering prompt engineering, evaluation pipelines, model governance, and content safety controls. Establish MLOps and LLMOps practices for deployment, monitoring, drift detection, and continuous improvement. Integrate LLM providers—OpenAI, Anthropic, Google—and orchestration frameworks like LangChain and LangGraph into production systems. Cloud and Platform Engineering Design cloud‑native solutions on GCP, Azure, or AWS using managed AI services. Architect CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure‑as‑code, and platform automation to accelerate engineering velocity. Define and enforce standards for containerization, microservices, API design, and event‑driven architectures. Leadership and Delivery Provide technical leadership to teams of 15–30 engineers across UI, backend, ML, and platform specialists. Mentor senior engineers and tech leads, cultivating future architects. Partner with product, design, and business stakeholders to scope initiatives, manage trade‑offs, and deliver measurable outcomes. Represent architecture in executive forums, vendor evaluations, and strategic planning. Required Qualifications 15+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, including at least 5 years in architecture or senior technical leadership. Deep expertise in full‑stack development: Python, Java, microservices, Spring Boot or equivalent. Proven experience architecting and deploying Generative AI solutions, including RAG systems and LLM integration. Strong command of one major cloud platform (GCP, Azure, or AWS) with a track record of scalable, multi‑tenant systems. Leadership experience over distributed engineering teams of 15+ across multiple time zones. Measurable delivery of enterprise‑grade systems serving large user bases. Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline. Preferred Qualifications Experience with agentic AI frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, AutoGen, or CrewAI. Familiarity with Voice AI, ASR, TTS, and dialog management. Background in commerce or B2B e‑commerce platforms. Exposure to data platforms—BigQuery, Snowflake, Databricks—and modern data architectures. Industry certifications like TOGAF, GCP Professional Cloud Architect, or AWS Solutions Architect Professional. Active engagement in the tech community through talks, publications, or patents. Technical Skill Profile AI and Machine Learning Generative AI, LLMs, LangChain, LangGraph, RAG architectures, vector search, prompt engineering, fine‑tuning, MLOps, responsible AI, multi‑agent systems, Voice AI, semantic search. Programming and Frameworks Python, Java SE, Spring Boot, Spring MVC, Spring JPA, Spring REST, Spring Cloud, Hibernate, REST and GraphQL API design. Cloud and DevOps GCP (Vertex AI, AlloyDB, Cloud Functions), Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD tooling, Terraform, observability stacks. Web and Mobile Angular, React, Node.js, modern JavaScript frameworks, HTML5, responsive design, accessibility standards. Data Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, AlloyDB, vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector), event streaming (Kafka, Pub/Sub). Leadership Competencies Strategic Thinking Influence Without Authority Executive Communication Builder's Mindset Mentorship Compensation and Benefits Base salary: $187,400 – $281,000 USD (U.S.) Variable cash programs (bonus or commission) and equity opportunities. Benefits: access to genomics sequencing, family planning, health/dental/vision, retirement benefits, and paid time off. Equal Employment Opportunity Illumina is an equal opportunity employer committed to providing employment opportunity regardless of sex, race, creed, color, gender, religion, marital status, domestic partner status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, sexual orientation, pregnancy, military or veteran status, citizenship status, and genetic information. Illumina conducts background checks on applicants for whom a conditional offer of employment has been made. Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable local, state, and federal laws. Background check results may potentially result in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment. The background check process and any decisions made as a result shall be made in accordance with all applicable local, state, and federal laws. Illumina prohibits the use of generative artificial intelligence in the application and interview process. If you require accommodation to complete the application or interview process, please contact accommodations at illumina.com. #J-18808-Ljbffr Illumina