Principal AI Engineer

Relocation:

• This position is open to candidates located anywhere in the United States who are willing to relocate to St. Louis.
• Relocation assistance is available for qualified candidates.

Location / Remote: Hybrid in St. Louis, MO; requires 3 days per week onsite after relocation

Employment Type: Permanent / Direct Hire

Compensation: $180k base salary + 15% bonus (up to 30% based on performance)

Benefits:

• Comprehensive medical coverage with HSA/FSA options available for employees and family members
• 401(k) with company match
• Paid time off (PTO)
• Access to employee wellness and benefits programs

This role is a hands-on technical leadership position focused on architecting and implementing autonomous coding agents powered by GitHub Copilot. You will design scalable systems, guide engineering teams, and enable AI-assisted development workflows to enhance productivity and software quality. Success in this role requires deep expertise in cloud-native systems, microservices architectures, and modern software development practices.

Responsibilities:

• Architect and implement GitHub Copilot autonomous coding agents to support engineering workflows across the organization.
• Design systems that provide context, guardrails, and instructions for AI-assisted software development.
• Build frameworks enabling coding agents to interact with repositories, development tools, and internal systems.
• Develop strategies for context retrieval and knowledge integration within large enterprise codebases.
• Define safety controls, governance models, and observability frameworks for AI-driven development.
• Collaborate with engineering leadership to integrate AI-powered workflows into the software development lifecycle.
• Provide technical guidance on distributed systems, microservices architectures, and cloud-native application development.
• Mentor engineers and influence architecture decisions across teams.
• Drive best practices in DevSecOps, engineering quality, and system reliability.
• Communicate complex technical concepts effectively to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Required Skills:

• 7+ years of hands-on software engineering experience building and delivering production systems.
• Extensive experience designing GitHub Copilot and autonomous coding agent frameworks, including guardrails, instruction sets, and contextual knowledge systems.
• Experience designing systems enabling AI agents to interact with development tools, APIs, and workflows.
• Experience implementing AI-assisted developer tooling or engineering productivity platforms.
• Experience designing and implementing cloud-native applications and distributed systems.
• Expertise in building microservices architectures and modern backend services.
• Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines and modern software development workflows.
• Proficiency with public cloud platforms such as Google Cloud Platform (Google Cloud Platform), AWS, or Azure.
• Ability to architect scalable systems and guide teams through complex technical decisions.
• Strong communication skills to explain technical concepts clearly.

Preferred Skills:

• Bachelor s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• Deep expertise with the GitHub ecosystem, including GitHub Actions, GitHub Apps, webhooks, and API integrations.
• Experience building AI-powered developer tooling or productivity platforms.
• Knowledge of LLM-powered application design, including agent frameworks and context retrieval strategies.
• Background in distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and microservices platforms.
• Experience implementing observability, governance, and safety frameworks for AI-assisted systems.
• Proven ability to mentor engineers and influence architecture decisions across large organizations.