Principal Engineer, AI Tooling and Workflows (Santa Clara)

NVIDIA has been transforming computer graphics, PC gaming, and accelerated computing for more than 25 years. It’s a unique legacy of innovation that’s fueled by great technology—and amazing people. Today, we’re tapping into the unlimited potential of AI to define the next era of computing. An era in which our GPU acts as the brains of computers, robots, and self-driving cars that can understand the world. Doing what’s never been done before takes vision, innovation, and the world’s best talent. As an NVIDIAN, you’ll be immersed in a diverse, supportive environment where everyone is inspired to do their best work. Come join the team and see how you can make a lasting impact on the world.NVIDIA's Infrastructure, Planning and Process (IPP) Team is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead the next generation of AI-powered engineering platforms. In this role, you will define and build agentic AI systems, developer productivity platforms, and intelligent workflow automation that accelerate software delivery across NVIDIA's engineering organization. Your work will help thousands of engineers move faster and improve quality and will also reduce manual overhead for various workflows. This is a high-impact role for a technology lead who can operate across strategy, architecture, execution, and influence!What you will be doing:Lead the technical vision, architecture, and execution for AI-native developer tooling and workflow automation platforms used across NVIDIA engineering.Invent and develop production-grade autonomous AI systems that can reason over engineering workflows - code, documentation, CI/CD pipelines.Drive the evolution of AI-assisted processes in software development, including code understanding, requirements traceability, validation, tests, build and release automation, security review.Define platform-level standards for reliability, evaluation, observability, safety, security, latency, cost efficiency, and human-in-the-loop controls for LLM-powered systems.Partner with engineering leaders, teams across products, infrastructure, security, and research to identify high-leverage opportunities and deliver solutions with broad impact.Influence technical direction across multiple teams by setting architecture patterns, reviewing designs, raising engineering standards, and mentoring senior engineers.What we need to see:PhD or MS or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience .15+ years of software engineering experience.Experience in large-scale platforms, distributed systems, AI systems, or developer infrastructure used by demanding engineering teams.Deep hands-on expertise with LLM applications, agentic workflows, RAG, embeddings, vector search, tool use, prompt engineering, model evaluation, and AI system safety.Exceptional architecture judgment across APIs, services, data pipelines, Kubernetes, observability, reliability engineering, security, and production operations.Strong coding ability in Python and at least one major production language such as C++, Go or Rust, with the judgment to build simple systems that scale.Technical leadership at Principal level: setting direction, aligning collaborators, guiding senior engineers, and raising the engineering bar across boundaries.Ways to stand out from the crowd:Built AI tools, copilots, or autonomous agents that materially changed how large engineering organizations build, validate, or operate software.Understanding of the full stack of enterprise AI systems: MCPs, tool-using agents, skills, retrieval, knowledge graphs, fine-tuning, model serving, evaluation, governance.Optimizations in AI platforms for real-world scale, including latency, throughput, cost, GPU acceleration, TensorRT, Triton, quantization, batching, caching, or model routing.Domain depth in GPU computing, drivers, compilers, embedded systems, robotics, autonomous vehicles, or other hardware-software environments.Spotting step-function productivity opportunities and turning them into efficient platforms that engineers love and leaders trustWidely considered to be one of the technology world’s most desirable employers, NVIDIA offers highly competitive salaries and a comprehensive benefits package. As you plan your future, see what we can offer to you and your family Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and the pay of employees in similar positions. The base salary range is 272,000 USD - 431,250 USD.You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.Applications for this job will be accepted at least until July 6, 2026.This posting is for an existing vacancy. NVIDIA uses AI tools in its recruiting processes.NVIDIA is committed to fostering an inclusive work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.SummaryLocation: US, CA, Santa ClaraType: Full time