# Principal Engineer, Engineering AI Productivity
**Company:** [Confluent](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/confluent)
**Location:** Remote
**Salary:** $285K-$342K
**Experience:** 8+ years
**Skills:** Distributed Systems, Agentic AI, Llm Integration, Workflow Automation, Ai Governance, Platform Engineering, Cloud-Native Platforms, Event-Driven Architecture, Real-Time Data, Responsible Ai
**Posted:** 2026-05-13
> Lead internal agentic AI initiatives to boost R&D productivity. Define strategy, build roadmaps, and deliver LLM-powered automation and workflows for engineering teams.
## Job Description
## What You Will Do

### Strategy & Vision
- Define and evangelize the AI and agentic flows strategy — aligning business metrics, engineering needs, and platform opportunities.
- Build a roadmap for introducing agentic automation features, smart assistants, and AI-driven workflows across all aspects of engineering.
- Identify and resolve bottlenecks across the entire product and software development life cycle.

### Cross-Functional Leadership
- Partner with Engineering, Trust and Security to integrate AI capabilities responsibly and at scale.
- Operationalize AI adoption internally and share use cases externally.
- Drive complex cross-team projects requiring multi-stakeholder alignment.
- Continuously raise the bar for code/architectural quality across engineering.

### Execution & Delivery
- Lead the delivery of core agentic workflows that improve productivity across engineering.
- Balance hands-on contributions with effective delegation (60% execution, 40% strategy setting).
- Drive measurable adoption of AI tooling and flows with internal teams.

### Governance & Best Practices
- Adopt industry standards, ethical frameworks, guardrails, and quality metrics for AI behavior and automated flows.
- Define success metrics and KPIs (e.g., AI-driven usage lift, automation ROI, reduction in manual workflows).

### Thought Leadership
- Participate in external forums — conferences, podcasts, customer briefings.
- Evolve as the technology landscape shifts.
- Write internal playbooks for building and scaling agentic outcomes.

## What You Will Bring

### Technical and Product Acumen
- 8+ years driving strategic productivity initiatives, ideally in SaaS/Cloud platforms or developer tools with proven experience in AI initiatives.
- Expert in building distributed systems and/or the infrastructure and tools to support it.

### Leadership & Collaboration
- Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams and influence senior stakeholders without direct authority.
- Strong communicator who can translate complex technical strategies into impact-oriented outcomes.

### Execution Focus
- Demonstrated track record delivering products or features that generated measurable business value.
- Comfortable defining success criteria, metrics, and ROI for ambiguous, future-facing domains.

### AI/ML & Automation
- Hands-on experience with AI or adjacent AI/ML platform experience with LLM integration and workflow automation, with demonstrated appetite to build toward agentic patterns.
- Deep understanding of responsible AI practices and governance.

### Customer & Business Mindset
- Passion for solving real customer problems with elegant, scalable solutions.
- Ability to tie technical efforts directly to business KPIs (adoption, retention, revenue impact).

## What Gives You an Edge
- Experience working in cloud-native platforms or developer ecosystems.
- Prior leadership in scaling internal AI platforms or driving AI adoption across large organizations.
- Background in real-time data, event-driven architecture, or platform engineering.
**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/principal-engineer-engineering-ai-productivity-at-confluent-5c132095-9ed0-4a54-b800-dfbee63d61c8
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/principal-engineer-engineering-ai-productivity-at-confluent-5c132095-9ed0-4a54-b800-dfbee63d61c8