Job Description

Join our innovative team at REI Co-op and be at the forefront of AI technology. You'll have the opportunity to shape the future of best-in-class omnichannel retail and customer experiences. If you are passionate about AI and thrive in a dynamic, collaborative environment, we want to hear from you

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Senior Principal Engineer to lead our Generative AI initiatives. In this role, you will act as an AI expert and thought leader, defining the strategy and technical roadmap for AI at REI. You will be a key influencer in our AI transformation, ensuring the ethical, performant, and innovative use of AI technologies, including ML, NLP, LLM, and Generative AI. You will work closely with cross-functional teams to deliver high-quality AI solutions that meet our business needs and significantly impact both customer and employee experiences.

As a Senior Principal Engineer , your responsibilities will include:

• Strategy & Architecture: Define and lead REI's Generative AI strategy and roadmap, translating business objectives into scalable, actionable initiatives.
• Technical Leadership: Engineer and oversee the implementation of core Generative AI platforms, models, and integrations, ensuring they are robust, secure, and align with REI's technology stack.
• Innovation: Stay at the forefront of Generative AI advancements, identifying emerging technologies, and assessing their applicability to REI's unique needs.
• Mentorship & Best Practices: Establish coding standards, model evaluation methodologies, responsible AI guidelines, and MLOps practices. You will also mentor and upskill engineering teams across various departments.
• Cross-Functional Influence: Collaborate with Product, Merchandising, Marketing, and Operations to identify high-impact use cases and drive successful pilot programs and widespread adoption of AI solutions.
• Reliability: Participate in 24/7 incident response for AI systems, ensuring reliability and performance.

The "Principal" level is critical for Gen AI given its nascent stage and transformative potential:

• Strategic Vision: This role demands someone capable of setting long-term direction, not just executing immediate tasks. A Principal Engineer will build the foundational architecture and define the patterns for future scalable Gen AI solutions.
• Complexity & Risk Mitigation: Gen AI involves significant technical complexity, ethical considerations, and data governance challenges. A Senior Principal Engineer possesses the depth of experience to navigate these complexities, identify potential pitfalls, and implement robust safeguards.
• Influence & Standardization: This person will drive adoption across multiple engineering teams and departments, requiring significant influence, technical credibility, and the ability to establish company-wide standards and best practices for Gen AI development and deployment.
• Mentorship & Team Growth: As a subject matter expert, they will mentor existing engineers, build internal capability, and attract specialized talent to grow our Gen AI competency from within.
• Immediate Impact: A Senior Principal Engineer can hit the ground running, rapidly assessing our current state, identifying critical paths, and initiating high-value projects with minimal oversight.

What You Bring

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with 5+ years specializing in AI/ML systems.
• Extensive experience with AI/ML frameworks and libraries such as TensorFlow and PyTorch.
• Deep proficiency in Python, with a proven understanding of the full machine learning lifecycle, from data engineering to model deployment.
• Expertise in CI/CD for ML (MLOps), including tools like MLflow, Kubeflow, or Argo.
• Experience with cloud-based AI platforms (e.g., AWS SageMaker, Azure ML, GCP Vertex AI).
• A proven grasp of AI ethics, fairness, and interpretability.
• Proven experience leading AI projects in large-scale enterprise environments.
• Exceptional problem-solving skills and the ability to think critically and strategically.
• Exceptional communication and leadership skills with a proven ability to influence and mentor teams.

Core Technical Expertise

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with 5+ years specializing in building and deploying AI/ML systems at scale.
• Deep Generative AI & Large Language Model (LLM) Expertise:
• Involved experience with modern Generative AI development frameworks and tools (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex ).
• Deep understanding of LLM architectures (e.g., GPT, BERT, T5) and the ability to train, fine-tune, and deploy these models.
• Proficiency in Prompt Engineering , including advanced techniques for model control and optimization.
• Experience with advanced retrieval systems and architectures like RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) , including the use of vector databases.
• AI/ML Frameworks & Languages:
• Expert-level proficiency in Python .
• Deep, direct experience with major AI frameworks such as PyTorch and TensorFlow .
• MLOps & Productionization:
• Proven track record of designing and implementing the full ML lifecycle, from data engineering to model training, evaluation, and deployment.
• Expertise in CI/CD for ML (MLOps) , with direct experience using tools like MLflow, Kubeflow , or similar platforms.
• Experience architecting and maintaining production-grade machine learning pipelines that are scalable and reliable.
• Cloud AI Platforms:
• Extensive experience with cloud-based AI platforms such as AWS SageMaker, Azure Machine Learning, or GCP Vertex AI .
• Deep understanding of distributed computing and parallel processing for handling large-scale datasets and model training.

Experience with AI Agent Platforms

• Direct experience building agents and intelligent applications using leading AI platforms and services, such as:
• Microsoft Copilot Studio: Experience creating and customizing conversational agents and copilots.
• Anthropic: Deep familiarity with Anthropic's models (e.g., Claude) and API for building sophisticated conversational AI.
• Amazon Bedrock Agents: Experience with building multi-step, autonomous agents and orchestrating them with company systems and APIs.
• Google Vertex AI Agent Builder: Experience developing and deploying multi-agent systems using an open and comprehensive platform.

Architectural & Strategic Skills

• Architectural Leadership: Ability to design and architect complex, end-to-end AI/ML systems that are robust, secure, and integrated into a broader enterprise technology stack.
• Strategic Vision: Demonstrated ability to translate complex business problems into a clear, long-term technical roadmap for Generative AI and AI/ML initiatives.
• Data & Infrastructure: Exceptional understanding of data engineering, data governance, and the underlying infrastructure required to support large-scale AI applications.

Leadership & Soft Skills

• Mentorship & Influence: A track record of mentoring and guiding senior-level engineers and a proven ability to influence technical direction across multiple teams and departments.
• Communication: Exceptional communication skills with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders (e.g., Product, Marketing, Merchandising).
• Responsible AI: A proven grasp of AI ethics, bias mitigation, fairness, and interpretability, with a commitment to building AI systems responsibly.
• Problem-Solving: The ability to navigate ambiguous requirements and solve highly complex, open-ended technical challenges with minimal oversight.

At REI, we believe the outdoors is for all. We are committed to becoming a fully inclusive, anti-racist, multicultural organization . We know that there's strength in our diversity – that each employee brings unique skills, experiences, and perspectives. Every day you are driving change, fostering a culture of respect, and knowing you're backed by benefits that support your whole life. To work towards this commitment and fulfill our brand promise of inspiring and enabling a life outside for everyone, we seek employees who demonstrate different ways of working, create a sense of belonging, and actively listen and learn.

Pay Transparency

We are committed to practices that promote pay equity and transparency. As required by applicable Pay Transparency laws, REI provides a range of compensation for roles that may be hired in locations under these requirements. Factors that may be used to determine your actual salary may include a wide array of factors, including: your specific skills and experience, geographic location or other relevant factors.

REI offers all regular employees a generous employee discount, access to health benefits, a retirement savings plan and accrued time off. Click for a detailed overview of benefits plans by employee profile.

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