> Markdown version of [/jobs/ext/4590739-principal-software-engineer-ai-data-engineering](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/jobs/ext/4590739-principal-software-engineer-ai-data-engineering). Every page supports `.md` or `Accept: text/markdown`. Links point to the HTML versions so they work for humans too. Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Principal Software Engineer, AI Data Engineering - **Company:** Philip Morris International Inc. - **Location:** United States (Remote available) - **Contract:** Permanent contract - **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Engineering, Encodings, Continuous Integration, Information Engineering, Data Governance, Distributed Systems, Software Engineering, Enterprise Software Applications, Indexer, Event Driven Architecture, Information Technology, Low Latency, Data Pipelines - **Published:** November 5, 2026 - **Apply:** https://arc.dev/remote-jobs/j/redirect/pwofb882k0 ## About the Role * Degree in Computer Science, IT, Software Engineering or a related discipline. * Enterprise software engineering experience in cloud-native and distributed systems. * Hands-on enterprise AI data engineering, grounding and retrieval experience. * Knowledge of data pipelines, contracts, schemas, lineage, provenance, metadata and quality controls. * Experience with ingestion, indexing, chunking, embedding, retrieval and refresh patterns. * Ability to assess relevance, freshness, scalability, latency, cost and access-control trade-offs. * Experience with batch and streaming architectures, observability and recoverability. * Strong secure software development, CI/CD, testing and production-readiness foundations. * Proven technical leadership through standards, reviews, supplier assurance and remediation. * Strong communication, cross-team influence, mentoring and documentation skills. Nice-to-have * Advanced study in AI/ML, distributed systems or cloud/platform engineering. ## Description Join our AI Delivery & Engineering team and provide principal-level technical leadership for reusable enterprise AI data and grounding capabilities. You'll help ensure AI solutions use secure, scalable, reliable and well-governed data foundations. Impact You'll Own * Define data engineering standards for reusable AI data and grounding capabilities. * Strengthen solution quality through reviews of supplier designs, code, schemas, transformations and evidence. * Guide decisions on data sources, retrieval relevance, freshness, quality, cost and latency. * Improve traceability, permissions, lifecycle controls and readiness across shared assets and AI solutions. * Align data standards, dependencies and ownership boundaries across engineering and data teams. What You'll Do * Define standards for data contracts, ingestion, transformation, indexing, grounding and refresh patterns. * Review supplier pipelines, code, schemas, retrieval configurations, lineage and quality evidence. * Assess source suitability, freshness, retrieval relevance and downstream AI behavior. * Set expectations for permissions, access controls, retention and deletion across sources, indexes and caches. * Partner with Quality and Testing to assess completeness, validity, provenance and reproducibility. * Review readiness for schema changes, refresh failures, recoverability and operational handover. * Turn findings and incidents into improved standards, guidance and reference patterns.