Principal Applied Artificial Intelligence Engineer

Join Appian Engineering as a Principal Applied Artificial Intelligence Engineer. In this role, you will be the technical linchpin for applied AI, driving the design and delivery of high-complexity AI systems. You will lead platform modernization efforts, optimize performance and scale, and drive engineering excellence. Additionally, you will actively coach and mentor engineers, influence technical documentation, and have a significant impact on technical decisions and engineering practices across the organization.

• Architect, build, and optimize high-performance production LLM systems while maintaining a strong personal technical presence on the team.
• Drive the design and delivery of high-complexity AI systems — spanning code generation, agents, retrieval, structured generation, tool use, model routing, evaluation, and observability.
• Actively coach and mentor engineers at multiple levels, identify and close skill gaps on the team, and take ownership of accelerating the technical growth of those around you.

• Cross-Team Influence: Demonstrated ability to drive technical decisions and shape engineering practices beyond a single team or project scope
• AI Systems Expertise: Demonstrated expertise across code generation, agents, retrieval, structured generation, tool use, model routing, evaluation, and observability
• Communication & Alignment: Exceptional ability to communicate highly technical architectures verbally, visually, and in writing to diverse engineering audiences
• Production Mastery: Proven experience developing, optimizing, and maintaining a high-volume, mission-critical production service environment
• Education: Minimum of a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science or a related technical/analytical discipline. (Equivalent experience is not accepted in lieu of a degree)
• Experience: 10+ years of relevant software development experience with a BS (or 8+ years of experience paired with a Master of Science in Computer Science or related field)
• Production LLM Systems: Deep hands-on experience designing and operating production LLM systems
• AI-Augmented Development: Demonstrated experience using AI coding assistants and a strong ability to evaluate, coach others on, and selectively apply AI-generated code in a production engineering context
• Domain Expertise: Strong distributed-systems, API, security, and reliability foundations, with the ability to contribute meaningfully at a senior individual contributor level within that space
• Compilers & Program Analysis: Experience with compilers, program analysis, formal or executable specifications, or legacy modernization is strongly preferred
• We value experience with enterprise platforms such as Salesforce or ServiceNow, as these skills translate well into our Enterprise-Grade Orchestration environment