Principal Engineer

About this role:

Wells Fargo is seeking a Principal Engineer that will operate with a high level of independence, making critical decisions on AI architecture, solution design, and risk management without the need for close supervision. The resource will define technical strategies, approve designs, and ensure compliance with minimal escalation, serving as a trusted authority across cybersecurity, data science, and engineering teams. Their autonomy enables rapid, expert decision-making while aligning with enterprise goals and governance standards.

In this role, you will:

• Act as an advisor to leadership to develop or influence applications, network, information security, database, operating systems, or web technologies for highly complex business and technical needs across multiple groups
• Consistently provide strategic technical leadership, ensuring AI solutions are designed with scalability, security, and enterprise alignment in mind.
• Oversee architecture and design reviews to significantly strengthen the integrity and consistency of our AI-driven cybersecurity capabilities.
• Contribute to innovation, identify emerging trends and translating them into actionable solutions that support proactive threat detection and response.
• Successfully deliver new AI capabilities, helping position the organization at the forefront of cyber defense automation.
• Collaborate with engineering, data science, platform, and cyber teams to bridge technical and business perspectives, fostering alignment and accelerating delivery outcomes.
• Provide attention to risk and compliance to ensure that all AI initiatives meet internal and regulatory standards, including model explainability and ethical use
• Advance our Cyber AI strategy and ensure that our design authority functions with integrity, innovation, and impact.
• Lead the strategy and resolution of highly complex and unique challenges requiring in-depth evaluation across multiple areas or the enterprise, delivering solutions that are long-term, large-scale and require vision, creativity, innovation, advanced analytical and inductive thinking
• Translate advanced technology experience, an in-depth knowledge of the organizations tactical and strategic business objectives, the enterprise technological environment, the organization structure, and strategic technological opportunities and requirements into technical engineering solutions
• Provide vision, direction and expertise to leadership on implementing innovative and significant business solutions
• Maintain knowledge of industry best practices and new technologies and recommends 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

Required Qualifications:

• 7+ years of Engineering experience, or equivalent demonstrated through one or a combination of the following: work experience, training, military experience, education

Desired Qualifications:

• AI Architecture and Design Authority

• Lead the design and governance of AI/ML architectures used in cybersecurity solutions.
• Define and enforce design principles, standards, and integration patterns for AI capabilities.
• Review and approve technical designs to ensure scalability, security, and compliance.

• Technical Leadership and Innovation

• Drive innovation in applying AI/ML to cyber use cases such as threat detection, anomaly detection, and response automation.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and lead the development of proof-of-concepts and pilots.
• Serve as a subject matter expert guiding teams across cybersecurity and engineering.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration and Alignment

• Partner with product managers, platform teams, and cyber operations to align technical solutions with business objectives.
• Ensure AI capabilities integrate seamlessly with cyber platforms and data pipelines.
• Facilitate design and working groups to align across teams.

• Risk Management and Compliance Oversight

• Identify and mitigate technical risks associated with AI use in cybersecurity.
• Ensure models and AI systems comply with internal security policies, privacy standards, and ethical AI principles.
• Provide oversight into model explainability, fairness, and security

• Document and Knowledge Sharing

• Maintain high-quality documentation of architecture, design decisions, and patterns.
• Mentor engineers and promote knowledge sharing across the cyber and AI communities.
• Lead training sessions and contribute t