About this role
Architecting the system design for agentic AI capabilities forms the core day-to-day focus, overseeing orchestration, state management, tool boundaries, and reliability patterns for non-deterministic systems. Working alongside the Chief Architect and a Data Science team, the principal engineer prototypes to validate architectural choices, drafts technical design reviews, and sets standards across engineering teams without writing end-to-end production application code.
Operating as a senior individual contributor within a hybrid structure, the role requires collaborating with product and engineering leadership to align distributed systems with machine learning outputs. Candidates who succeed here combine deep distributed systems expertise with strong technical writing and consensus-building skills, guiding teams through complex shifts toward AI-native workflows while maintaining production scale and reliability.
What you will do
- Own the system design for agentic capabilities including orchestration, context and state management, tool boundaries, and reliability patterns for non-deterministic systems.
- Write technical design reviews, design documents, and standards that establish architectural direction for agentic work across teams.
- Prototype architectural decisions to validate concepts before engineering teams commit to them at scale.
- Partner closely with the data science team so that agent and model work integrates cleanly with existing platform services ranging from APIs to event streaming and storage.
- Review technical design reviews from across engineering to provide substantive feedback on architecture and risk.
- Build consensus across engineering teams to secure genuine alignment on technical direction.
- Drive the shift toward AI-assisted and agentic development across engineering to shape how teams design, review, and iterate.
- Mentor senior and staff engineers on agentic system design and clearly communicate architectural trade-offs to executives and customers.
What you need
- Ten or more years of software engineering experience, including significant time as a senior, staff, or principal-level architect or technical lead designing production systems.
- Deep expertise in distributed systems such as service boundaries, consistency models, event-driven architecture, API design, and operating systems reliably at scale.
- Hands-on experience building, prototyping, and architecting agentic or LLM-powered systems in production including agent loop design, context engineering, tool integration, and RAG architectures.
- Working knowledge of data engineering fundamentals including data modeling, pipeline design, and streaming versus batch processing.
- Proven track record of influence without authority through presenting technical direction to skeptical engineers and earning genuine buy-in.
- Strong technical writing and mentorship abilities with a history of creating actionable design documents and raising the technical bar.
- Ability to communicate complex architectural decisions clearly to executive stakeholders and customers.
- Comfort operating as a senior individual contributor driving outcomes through prototyping and technical credibility.
Nice to have
- Familiarity with multi-agent orchestration patterns like supervisor and sub-agent architectures and agent handoffs
- Experience with Node.js, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, ClickHouse, Kafka, AWS, or Kubernetes
- Experience leading AI-assisted or agentic development adoption across an engineering organization
- Experience partnering closely with data science or machine learning teams on productionizing their work
- Cybersecurity industry background
Benefits
- Competitive salary
- Stock options
- Health benefits
- Unlimited PTO
- Parental leave
- Tuition reimbursements
Skills and tech stack
Questions candidates ask
What is the remote work and hybrid policy for this position?
Employees who live within 75 miles of the Midtown NYC or Downtown Austin office are required to work onsite 1 to 2 days per week. Employees who live outside a 75-mile radius of both offices are eligible for fully remote work.
What is the compensation range for this role?
For candidates based in New York, the estimated total compensation range is $270,000 to $330,000 USD including base salary plus bonus. For candidates based in Austin, the estimated total compensation range is $240,000 to $300,000 USD including base salary plus bonus.
What technologies make up the platform tech stack?
The platform runs on Node.js and TypeScript, utilizing a React microfrontend architecture with PostgreSQL and ClickHouse for storage. Event streaming uses Kafka, and infrastructure runs on AWS with Kubernetes, Terraform, Helm, and ArgoCD.
Who does this role report to and what team is it part of?
This is an individual contributor role reporting to the Chief Architect. The position sits alongside a front-end architect and a data-focused architect while partnering closely with engineering leadership, product, and data science.
The application is on the official SecurityScorecard careers page.
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