Principal Engineer, AI

Description & Requirements

About the Role

Drive hands-on delivery of AI and Generative AI solutions that streamline workflows and deliver measurable business value—measured by hours saved and the breadth of users served. You will architect, develop, and maintain production-gra de systems encompassing RAG pipelines, agentic tools, model routing, vector search, evaluation, and guardrails, and o bservability—a ll tightly integrated with internal platforms and enterprise datasets.

What You Will Do

· Automate high-impact workflows for internal stakeholders, prioritizing initiatives with the greatest time savings and broadest user reach.

· Deliver production-rea dy copilots and customer-facin g applications for knowledge search, document summarization, intelligent recommendation s, conversational analytics, and end-to-end workflow automation.

· Establish operational excellence through rigorous SLAs, latency and throughput optimization, robust safety and guardrail mechanisms, transparent evaluation frameworks, and cost-efficient inference strategies.

• Architect and develop scalable, high-performan ce data and AI systems that support GenAI use cases including RAG, agentic workflows, and model orchestration.

• Own the complete solution lifecycle: problem definition → rapid prototyping → rigorous evaluation → production deployment → ongoing monitoring.

• Implement guardrails (content policies, safety filters), prompt and version management, latency and throughput tuning, cost controls, load balancing, and fallback or model-routing strategies.

• Design and implement RAG pipelines over heterogeneous and often messy datasets—inclu ding requirements documents, lessons learned, business rules, and unstructured content.

• Select appropriate embedding strategies, chunking approaches, vector search c onfigurations, rerankers, and routing policies to maximize retrieval quality.

• Develop agentic workflows leveraging LangChain, LlamaIndex, MCP, and agent-to-agent (A2A) protocols; build tooling for agentic coding use cases.

• Translate su bject-matter-e xpert knowledge into robust, maintainable prompts; evaluate trade-offs between fine-tuning and prompt engineering.

• Work hands-on with large language models, vector databases (Pinecone, FAISS), and agent memory systems.

• Containerize applications with Docker, orchestrate with Kubernetes, and automate CI/CD pipelines; manage infrastructure as code (e.g. Terraform).

• Establish observability (Datadog, Grafana, LangFuse), evaluation frameworks, and model/data governance and access controls appropriate for internal enterprise environments.

• Bring experience building and maintaining data lakes and warehouses (Snowflake, Delta Lake, BigQuery, MS Fabric).

• Build internal copilots and customer-facin g features using React, Node.js, and Python with REST or GraphQL backends.

· Collaborate closely with requirements, testing, validation, and platform teams; thrive in a fast-paced environment with clear, proactive communication and rapid iteration.

What You Need To Be Successful

• 8+ years of experience building production software

• Programming: Python (FastAPI, NumPy, Pandas, scikit-learn, Pydantic, Jinja2) and Node.js; strong proficiency with APIs and distributed systems.

• Model Providers: Working familiarity with connecting to inference providers e.g. AWS Bedrock, along with OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta/Llama, and Mistral model ecosystems.

• Data & Storage: SQL and NoSQL databases (PostgreSQL, DynamoDB), Elasticsearch for search and analytics, and vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, FAISS, Milvus, pgvector).

• Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS (S3, EC2, Lambda, CloudWatch, Fargate, EKS/ECS), Azure, GCP, Databricks, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD, Airflow, and Kafka.

• Operational Excellence: Load balancing, monitoring, and alerting (Datadog, Grafana, LangFuse), debugging production issues, and cost/performance optimization.

• Soft Skills: Strong communication abilities, product-oriented thinking, and the capacity to learn and adapt quickly in a dynamic environment.

• Education: BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, or equivalent professional experience

What Is Nice To Have

• Experience building ML Systems
• LLMs & Frameworks: Hands-on experience with at least one major deep learning or LLM stack (e.g., PyTorch/Transformers, TensorFlow/Keras) and orchestration frameworks such as LangChain or LlamaIndex.

What Makes You Eligible
* Be willing to work in an office located in Novi, MI (hybrid)
* Successfully complete a background investigation and drug screen as a condition of employment

What We Offer
* Access to employee discounts on world-class products (JBL, HARMAN Kardon, AKG, and more)
* Extensive training opportunities through our own HARMAN University
* Competitive wellness benefits
* Tuition reimbursement
* "Be Brilliant" employee recognition and rewards program
* An inclusive and diverse work environment that fosters and encourages professional and personal development

#Hybrid

Pay Transparency

$ 125,250 - $ 183,700

Dependent on the position offered, other forms of compensation are also available, such as bonuses or commission.

Pay is based on a wide range of factors, including, without limitation, skill set, experience, training, location, and business need. While the above range is a reasonable estimate of the wage range for this position, please note the disclosed range estimate has not been adjusted for the applicable geographical differential associated with the location where the position may be filled.

Benefits

HARMAN is interested in the health and wellbeing of you and your family and offers a range of benefits designed to support your needs for holistic wellbeing. Benefits and perks may vary depending on the nature of your employment with HARMAN, and may include paid vacation and holidays, paid sick leave, volunteer leave, and paid bonding and care giver leave. Employees may also be eligible to participate in comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans, fertility support and adoption assistance, Health Savings and Flexible Spending Accounts, retirement savings plan with employer match, short and long term disability coverage, life insurance, and more.

About HARMAN: Where Innovation Unleashes Next-Level Technology 

Ever since the 1920s, we’ve been amplifying the sense of sound. Today, that legacy endures, with integrated technology platforms that make the world smarter, safer, and more connected.  

Across automotive, lifestyle, and digital transformation solutions, we create innovative technologies that turn ordinary moments into extraordinary experiences. Our renowned automotive and lifestyle solutions can be found everywhere, from the music we play in our cars and homes to venues that feature today’s most sought-after performers, while our digital transformation solutions serve humanity by addressing the world’s ever-evolving needs and demands. Marketing our award-winning portfolio under 16 iconic brands, such as JBL, Mark Levinson, and Revel, we set ourselves apart by exceeding the highest engineering and design standards for our customers, our partners and each other. 

If you’re ready to innovate and do work that makes a lasting impact, join our talent community today!

Important Notice: Recruitment Scams

Please be aware that HARMAN recruiters will always communicate with you from an '@harman.com', ‘@careers.harman.com’ or ‘@harmanglobal.avature.net’ email address. We will never ask for payments, banking, credit card, personal financial information or access to your LinkedIn/email account during the screening, interview, or recruitment process. If you are asked for such information or receive communication from an email address not ending in one of the above email domains about a job with HARMAN, please cease communication immediately and report the incident to us through: View email address on jobsearch.harman.com.

You Belong Here 

HARMAN is committed to making every employee feel welcomed, valued, and empowered. No matter what role you play, we encourage you to share your ideas, voice your distinct perspective, and bring your whole self with you – all within a support-minded culture that celebrates what makes each of us unique. We also recognize that learning is a lifelong pursuit and want you to flourish. We proudly offer added opportunities for training, development, and continuing education, further empowering you to live the career you want.  

HARMAN is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. HARMAN strives to hire the best qualified candidates and is committed to building a workforce representative of the diverse marketplaces and communities of our global colleagues and customers.  All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. HARMAN attracts, hires, and develops employees based on merit, qualifications and job-related performance.() 

HARMAN is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities. If you need assistance or an accommodation during the application process, please contact us at  View email address on jobsearch.harman.com . Requests will be considered on a case-by-case basis in accordance with applicable law.