Principal Machine Learning Engineer
SMART TECH SKILLS LLC
1 day ago
Full-time
Remote friendly (United States)
Worldwide
ML & AI Engineering
Benefits:
- Competitive salary
Location
Remote to start, then becomes hybrid in Raleigh, NC (relocation required; candidates able to relocate at the start of the contract are preferred, though relocation may occur upon conversion to full-time).
Experience Level
Principal Level (10+ years of experience in machine learning/AI engineering).
Role Overview
We are seeking a Principal Machine Learning Engineer to architect, develop, and advise on end-to-end AI solutions leveraging large language models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and agentic systems. This is a senior individual contributor role for someone who wants to remain highly technical rather than move into people management, while providing technical strategy and architectural guidance to a growing data science team. The ideal candidate has played a lead role in designing and establishing a new agentic RAG-based system, with demonstrated ownership of meaningful architectural and technical decisions — not simply a contributor within a larger team.
Key Responsibilities
AI Architecture & Solution Design
Remote to start, then becomes hybrid in Raleigh, NC (relocation required; candidates able to relocate at the start of the contract are preferred, though relocation may occur upon conversion to full-time).
Experience Level
Principal Level (10+ years of experience in machine learning/AI engineering).
Role Overview
We are seeking a Principal Machine Learning Engineer to architect, develop, and advise on end-to-end AI solutions leveraging large language models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and agentic systems. This is a senior individual contributor role for someone who wants to remain highly technical rather than move into people management, while providing technical strategy and architectural guidance to a growing data science team. The ideal candidate has played a lead role in designing and establishing a new agentic RAG-based system, with demonstrated ownership of meaningful architectural and technical decisions — not simply a contributor within a larger team.
Key Responsibilities
AI Architecture & Solution Design
- Architect, develop, and advise on end-to-end AI solutions leveraging LLMs, RAG, agentic systems, and cloud-scale infrastructure.
- Construct, study, and train algorithms that learn from complex, high-dimensionality data to uncover patterns for predictive models and applications.
- Apply techniques such as random forests, deep learning, generative modeling, and neural network memory to improve NLP and machine perception algorithms.
Proof of Concept & Technology Evaluation
- Develop proofs of concept and initial implementations for new AI capabilities.
- Evaluate and test-drive new frameworks and tools to inform technical direction.
Technical Strategy & Leadership
- Work closely with architects to guide teams on AI system design and best practices.
- Provide technical strategy and stay current with industry standards in AI and machine learning.
- Understand the full environment and systems end to end, ensuring production readiness.
- Align AI system design with business and technical goals.
Required Qualifications
- Deep expertise in LLMs, RAG, and agentic systems.
- Experience with Model Context Protocol (MCP) and vector databases.
- Strong experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
- Strong Python development skills and AI architecture experience.
- Experience with MLOps and software engineering best practices.
- Strong data engineering skills.
- Demonstrated experience designing, architecting, and implementing a new agentic RAG-based system, with evidence of meaningful architectural and technical decision-making (not solely as a contributor within a larger team).
- Engineering experience beyond core data science, including microservices architecture and cloud computing.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with GoLang.
- Experience working with unstructured data and document-heavy domains.
- Experience supporting or mentoring less senior data scientists/engineers as a technical lead.
Core Skills & Attributes
- Strong technical depth with a preference for remaining hands-on rather than pursuing people management.
- Proven ability to make and own architectural and technical decisions on complex AI systems.
- Strong collaboration skills, particularly working closely with architects and cross-functional teams.
- Comfortable evaluating and adopting emerging tools and frameworks.
- Excellent communication skills for translating technical strategy across teams.
- Strong end-to-end systems thinking across AI architecture and production environments.
This is a remote position.