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# Principal Engineer - AI Platform & Operations in California City

- **Company:** Energy Jobline
- **Location:** California City, CA, United States (Remote available)
- **Experience:** Experienced
- **Salary:** $168,000.0 - $230,000.0
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** A/B Testing, Artificial Intelligence, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Continuous Integration, Python (Programming Language), Software Product Management, Cloud Services, Tensorflow, Management of Software Versions, Cloud Platform System, Large Language Models, AI Platforms, Kubernetes, Low Latency, Machine Learning Operations, Docker
- **Published:** September 4, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.energyjobline.com/job/principal-engineer-ai-platform-operations-california-city-31476461

## About the Role

* Senior Expertise: 12+ years of engineering experience, with at least 4 years at a Principal or Distinguished level.
 * ML Infrastructure Mastery: Expert-level knowledge of model serving (e.g., Triton, vLLM, Ray Serve) and deep experience with Kubernetes and cloud ecosystems (AWS/GCP/Azure).
 * The MLOps Toolkit: Proven experience with tools like MLflow, Weights & Biases, or Kubeflow.
 * Coding & Systems: High proficiency in Python and a "systems-thinking" approach to Docker, Helm, and containerization.
 * AI Specialization: Hands-on experience operating LLM inference at scale and a deep understanding of the trade-offs between throughput and latency.
 * Platform Mindset: A track record of building internal platforms that treat other engineers as the primary customer, drastically improving engineering velocity.

## Description

We are looking for a Principal Engineer to serve as the technical expert for our AI Platform & Operations. This isn't just a role about maintaining infrastructure; it's about owning the technical vision for the foundational systems that will power every AI product team across the company.

Remote Role - can be based in either Washington or California State.

Requirements

By building robust, self-serve internal developer platforms, you'll enable our engineers to deploy, monitor, and scale AI models with unprecedented efficiency and safety. Your work ensures that our "Agentic" future is reliable, cost-effective, and cutting-edge.

What You'll Be Doing

 * Architect the Future: Define the long-term technical roadmap for our AI platform, covering everything from model serving and feature stores to experiment tracking and CI/CD for ML.
 * Set the Gold Standard: Establish engineering benchmarks for deployment, versioning, A/B testing, and automated rollbacks.
 * Optimize & Scale: Lead strategies for GPU/compute efficiency and cost optimization while managing the complexities of LLM inference (quantization, batching, and latency) at scale.
 * Enhance Observability: Design sophisticated monitoring and alerting systems specifically tailored for AI workloads in production.
 * Champion Reliability: Drive platform stability and partner with application teams to ensure our infrastructure meets evolving product needs.
 * Technical Leadership: Mentor Senior engineers, lead architecture reviews, and evaluate the next of cloud services and ML frameworks.


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