Generative AI - Principal Engineer

About this role:

Wells Fargo is seeking a Principal Engineer to drive the design, development, and implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled applications aligned to employee-facing lines of business in Enterprise Functions Technology (EFT). The EFT AI team will focus on building intelligent, efficient, and user-centric tools to accelerate the work of users in Finance, Human Resources, Risk, Audit, Legal, Public Affairs, Diverse Segments and EFT Platform Technology. In addition to hands-on development, this role will play a key part in evolving the AI operating model for both horizontal (cross product/platform) and vertical support (product specific). As a key technical contributor, you will collaborate with cross-functional teams to align solutions with the mission of transforming the Wells Fargo employee experience.

This role will be a key contributor to shaping AI infrastructure, governance, and automation frameworks, working closely with cross-functional partners in technology, product management, and operations.  The horizontal focus of this role will support AI platform scalability, reliability and AI governance, ensuring alignment across EFT, while the vertical focus will support specific applications and their integration within business domains.

The successful candidate will have a deep expertise in AI engineering, cloud-based AI deployment, and AI model lifecycle management, along with experience in architecting AI solutions that align with responsible principles and enterprise business objectives.  This is a unique opportunity to lead AI engineering efforts while shaping the AI operating model.

In this role, you will:

• Design, develop and optimize Gen AI applications using agentic frameworks and tools
• Accelerate end to end solution delivery timelines by developing automated data, prompting and evaluation pipelines
• Streamline the enablement of Agentic AI solutions by building solution blueprints, re-usable patterns and identifying process improvements
• Lead AI engineering efforts that drive the design, development, scalability, and evolution of AI-powered products, ensuring AI adoption.
• Research and guide engineering efforts to solve complex engineering challenges and balance accuracy, latency and cost
• Evolve the AI operating model, ensuring seamless integration of AI solutions into business domains while providing horizontal AI governance and infrastructure support.
• Develop automated AI model monitoring frameworks, enabling continuous model updates, explainability, and performance tracking.
• Develop and scale AI platforms leveraging Large Language Model (LLM) services, real time analytics, AI automation, and intelligent decision-making.
• Act as an advisor and collaborate with leadership to integrate AI into existing enterprise systems and cloud platforms to implement innovative and significant business solutions.
• Drive cross-functional collaboration to define AI roadmaps, infrastructure strategies, and product enhancements, ensuring AI capabilities align with business AI strategies.
• Lead the strategy and resolution of highly complex and unique challenges requiring in-depth evaluation across multiple areas or the enterprise, delivering solutions that require vision, creativity, innovation, and advanced analytical and thinking.
• Maintain knowledge of industry best practices and new technologies and recommend innovations that enhance operations or provide a competitive advantage to the organization.
• Strategically engage with all levels of professionals and managers across the enterprise and serve as an expert advisor to leadership.
• Responsible for meticulous governance to address the unique risks posed by GenAI.
• Lead projects, teams, and serve as a peer mentor.

Required Qualifications:

• 7+ years of Engineering experience, or equivalent demonstrated through one or a combination of the following: work experience, training, military experience, education
• 7+ years of experience in backend application software development, with ability to quickly adapt Python code base.
• 2+ years of experience Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), prompt engineering and agentic workflows.

Desired Qualifications:

• Strong expertise in AI model development and deployment with a strong background in LLMs, generative AI, and AI-engineering.
• Deep experience with generative AI models, including model prompting, tuning, and safety best practices.
• Expertise in solution arc