{"id":16222,"url":"https://alion.io/job/confluent-principal-engineer-engineering-ai-productivity","title":"Principal Engineer, Engineering AI Productivity","company":{"id":4919,"name":"Confluent","domain":"confluent.io","url":"https://alion.io/company/confluent","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":95,"open_postings":17,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":107,"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"board_field","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":[],"countries":[],"hiring_countries":["US"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":{"min":285000,"max":342000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":342000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":8,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Agentic Workflows","optional":false},{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"LLM Guardrails","optional":false},{"name":"Platform Engineering","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-05-13T23:08:32Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-05-13","last_verified_at":"2026-10-17T07:11:10Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":156,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":0,"flags":["company_stale"],"days_open":156},"description":"We’re not just building better tech. We’re rewriting how data moves and what the world can do with it. With Confluent, data doesn’t sit still. Our platform puts information in motion, streaming in near real-time so companies can react faster, build smarter, and deliver experiences as dynamic as the world around them.\nIt takes a certain kind of person to join this team. Those who ask hard questions, give honest feedback, and show up for each other. No egos, no solo acts. Just smart, curious humans pushing toward something bigger, together.\nOne Confluent. One Team. One Data Streaming Platform.\nAbout the Role:\nWe’re seeking a strategic and hands-on technical leader to define and drive Confluent’s internal agentic AI capabilities, and adoption of smart, automated decisioning systems for R&D productivity. In this role, you will partner across Engineering, Security, and IT to scale AI usage across our platform to accelerate value for customers and the business.\nYou will operationalize a vision where AI augments developers, automates routine tasks, and orchestrates intelligent workflows that unlock new usage patterns.\nWhat You Will Do:\nStrategy & Vision\nDefine and evangelize the AI and agentic flows strategy - aligning business metrics, engineering needs, and platform opportunities.\n\nBuild a roadmap for introducing agentic automation features, smart assistants, and AI-driven workflows across all aspects of engineering.\n\nIdentify and resolve bottlenecks across the entire product and software development life cycle.\n\nCross-Functional Leadership\nPartner with Engineering, Trust and Security to integrate AI capabilities responsibly and at scale.\n\nOperationalize AI adoption internally and share use cases externally\n\nDrive complex cross-team projects requiring multi-stakeholder alignment\n\nContinuously raise the bar for code/architectural quality across engineering\n\nExecution & Delivery\nLead the delivery of core agentic workflows that improves productivity across engineering\n\nBalance of hands-on contributions with effective delegation to others. Expect 60% execution and 40% strategy setting.\n\nDrive measurable adoption of AI tooling and flows with internal teams\n\nGovernance & Best Practices\nAbility to adopt industry standards, ethical frameworks, guardrails, and quality metrics for AI behavior and automated flows.\n\nDefine success metrics and KPIs (e.g., AI-driven usage lift, automation ROI, reduction in manual workflows).\n\nThought Leadership\nParticipate in external forums - conferences, podcasts, customer briefings on occasion\n\nEvolve as the technology landscape shifts\n\nWrite internal playbooks for building and scaling agentic outcomes.\n\nWhat You Will Bring:\nTechnical and Product Acumen\n8+ years driving strategic productivity initiatives, ideally in SaaS/Cloud platforms or developer tools with some proven experience in AI initiatives.\n\nConsidered an expert in building distributed systems and/or the infrastructure and tools to support it.\n\nLeadership & Collaboration\nProven ability to lead cross-functional teams and influence senior stakeholders without direct authority.\n\nStrong communicator who can translate complex technical strategies into impact-oriented outcomes.\n\nExecution Focus\nDemonstrated track record delivering products or features that generated measurable business value.\n\nComfortable defining success criteria, metrics, and ROI for ambiguous, future-facing domains.\n\nAI/ML & Automation\nHands-on experience with AI or adjacent AI/ML platform experience with LLM integration and workflow automation, with demonstrated appetite to build toward agentic patterns\n\nDeep understanding of responsible AI practices and governance.\n\nCustomer & Business Mindset\nPassion for solving real customer problems with elegant, scalable solutions.\n\nAbility to tie technical efforts directly to business KPIs (adoption, retention, revenue impact).\n\nWhat Gives You an Edge:\nExperience working in cloud-native platforms or developer ecosystems.\n\nPrior leadership in scaling internal AI platforms or driving AI adoption across large organizations.\n\nBackground in real-time data, event-driven architecture, or platform engineering.\n\nIf you’re someone looking to bring agentic system design to production scale, let’s talk.\nReady to build what's next? Let’s get in motion.\nCome As You Are\nBelonging isn’t a perk here. It’s the baseline. We work across time zones and backgrounds, knowing the best ideas come from different perspectives. And we make space for everyone to lead, grow, and challenge what’s possible.\nWe’re proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. Employment decisions are based on job-related criteria, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other classification protected by law.\nPrivacy Statement\nConfluent is an IBM subsidiary which has been acquired by IBM and will be integrated into the IBM organization. By proceeding with this application, you understand that Confluent will share your personal information with other IBM affiliates involved in your recruitment process, wherever these are located. More Information on how IBM protects your personal information, including the safeguards in case of cross-border data transfer, are available here.","description_format":"text","description_chars":5296,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":8,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Stream Processing & Real-Time Data"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-05-13T23:08:32Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 91 · green card filings: 49","filings_12m":91,"filings_prev_12m":124,"green_card_filings_12m":49,"median_offered_wage_usd":187250,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":72}],"liveness":{"score":28,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.644,"p_room":0.44,"age_days":156,"expected_fill_days":107,"reasons":["conf:2","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":342000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/confluent-principal-engineer-engineering-ai-productivity","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/confluent-principal-engineer-engineering-ai-productivity.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-17T09:54:15Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":13015,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-18T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":4919},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=4919"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fconfluent-principal-engineer-engineering-ai-productivity"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fconfluent-principal-engineer-engineering-ai-productivity"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fconfluent-principal-engineer-engineering-ai-productivity"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/confluent-principal-engineer-engineering-ai-productivity\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fconfluent-principal-engineer-engineering-ai-productivity"}]}