Principal Engineer, Engineering AI Productivity

Details

Confluent is building a data streaming platform that enables companies to process information in near real time. The Engineering team is seeking a strategic and hands-on technical leader to define and drive internal agentic AI capabilities and the adoption of smart, automated decisioning systems for research and development productivity.

The role will partner across Engineering, Trust and Security, and IT to scale responsible AI usage, augment developers, automate routine tasks, and orchestrate intelligent workflows across the software development lifecycle. The position is expected to balance approximately 60% execution with 40% strategy setting.

Responsibilities

Strategy and Vision

• Define and evangelize the AI and agentic workflows strategy, aligning business metrics, engineering needs, and platform opportunities.
• Build a roadmap for agentic automation features, smart assistants, and AI-driven workflows across engineering.
• Identify and resolve bottlenecks across the product and software development lifecycle.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Partner with Engineering, Trust and Security, and IT to integrate AI capabilities responsibly and at scale.
• Operationalize internal AI adoption and share use cases externally.
• Drive complex cross-team projects requiring alignment among multiple stakeholders.
• Continuously raise the bar for code and architectural quality across engineering.

Execution and Delivery

• Lead delivery of core agentic workflows that improve productivity across engineering.
• Balance hands-on contributions with effective delegation.
• Drive measurable adoption of AI tooling and workflows with internal teams.

Governance and Best Practices

• Adopt industry standards, ethical frameworks, guardrails, and quality metrics for AI behavior and automated workflows.
• Define success metrics and KPIs, such as AI-driven usage lift, automation ROI, and reduction in manual workflows.

Thought Leadership

• Participate occasionally in external forums, including conferences, podcasts, and customer briefings.
• Evolve practices as the technology landscape changes.
• Write internal playbooks for building and scaling agentic outcomes.

Requirements

• 8+ years driving strategic productivity initiatives, ideally in SaaS or cloud platforms or developer tools, with proven experience in AI initiatives.
• Expertise in building distributed systems and/or the infrastructure and tools that support them.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams and influence senior stakeholders without direct authority.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to translate complex technical strategies into impact-oriented outcomes.
• Demonstrated track record delivering products or features that generated measurable business value.
• Ability to define success criteria, metrics, and ROI for ambiguous, future-facing domains.
• Hands-on experience with AI or adjacent AI/ML platform technologies, including LLM integration and workflow automation, with demonstrated interest in developing agentic patterns.
• Deep understanding of responsible AI practices and governance.
• Passion for solving real customer problems with elegant, scalable solutions.
• Ability to connect technical efforts directly to business KPIs such as adoption, retention, and revenue impact.

Preferred Experience

• Experience working with cloud-native platforms or developer ecosystems.
• Leadership experience scaling internal AI platforms or driving AI adoption across large organizations.
• Background in real-time data, event-driven architecture, or platform engineering.

Benefits

• Salary range of $285,000–$342,000 per year.
• Equity offered.
• Confluent provides a range of employee benefits.
• Equal opportunity workplace.

Privacy Statement

Confluent is an IBM subsidiary that has been acquired by IBM and will be integrated into the IBM organization. By applying, candidates understand that Confluent will share personal information with IBM affiliates involved in the recruitment process, wherever located.