Principal AI Engineer

RWE Americas is seeking a Principal AI Engineer to help shape and run shared artificial intelligence capabilities that multiple squads and business units depend on. This role sits at the platform layer, where you will integrate core AI building blocks, establish engineering patterns and reference implementations, and ensure production reliability, responsible AI controls, and cost-efficient operations.

Working in an office-based role in Chicago, IL (onsite), you will tackle enterprise-scale AI engineering challenges across retrieval, agent safety, evaluation, and operational observability, then scale those solutions through adoption and mentorship across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

• Integrate and operate shared AI platform capabilities used by squads and business units, including orchestration and agent frameworks, retrieval and knowledge services, evaluation tooling, model and prompt lifecycle management, observability, and guardrails, ensuring production readiness and adoption aligned with the enterprise target-state architecture and platform roadmap
• Address high-impact enterprise AI problems, such as improving retrieval quality across fragmented document and operational data estates, developing useful models when labeled outcomes are scarce, enabling agents to run safely in compliance-bound workflows, and resolving assets, sites, and other entities across systems without common identifiers
• Define reference implementations for AI development across squads and drive adoption by making engineering standards visible, consistent, and teachable
• Operationalize responsible AI at the platform level through evaluation and guardrail infrastructure, explainability and citation, bias and drift detection, override and audit logging, prompt and model versioning, and the evidence trail needed for compliance and audit
• Deliver AI platform cost efficiency through instrumentation and per-product economics, leading structural improvements to routing, caching, context management, and model tiering to keep spend proportional to value within the enterprise AI FinOps framework
• Increase engineering output by leading design reviews, coaching senior engineers, and evolving platform standards

Requirements

• Master’s or PhD degree in computer science, data science, STEM, or a related field
• Minimum 11 years of relevant professional experience in software or AI/ML engineering roles, including demonstrated experience building and operating shared platform capabilities used by multiple teams, and setting technical patterns other engineers follow
• Deep expertise in enterprise-scale AI development, with the ability to set engineering standards within an established platform architecture
• Production experience on a major cloud platform, including Python, containerized deployment, and CI/CD for AI services, plus current LLM orchestration and agent frameworks
• Extensive experience integrating and operating shared AI platform services in a production enterprise environment, with personal accountability for reliability and supportability
• Depth in responsible AI engineering with hands-on ownership of evaluation, guardrail, and audit infrastructure
• Demonstrated ability to drive AI platform cost efficiency using structural levers described above
• Proven ability to mentor and professionally develop junior AI engineers
• Experience with IT/OT environments, industrial data sources, or operational technology systems is preferred
• Experience in the power, utilities, or clean energy sector, including knowledge of U.S. power markets, renewable project development, and clean energy technologies is preferred
• Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States. RWE Americas is unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of employment visas at this time
• Office-based role with some travel and visits to other RWE Americas offices and field locations; the employee must be able to sit, walk, or stand for long durations of time

Technologies

• Python
• CI/CD
• LLM orchestration
• Agent frameworks
• Containerized deployment

Location

• Chicago, IL, US (onsite) 60654
• Austin, TX, US 78701

Compensation

• USD 178,000 - 240,000 per yearly
• Annual base salary range for Illinois: $178,000 - $240,000
• Remuneration: Exempt

Benefits

• Medical
• Dental
• Vision
• Life Insurance
• Short-Term Disability
• Long-Term Disability
• 401(k) match
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• EAP
• Education Assistance
• Parental Leave
• Paid time off
• Holidays
• Eligible employees also participate in short-term incentives, in addition to salary

Functional Area: IT / Digital