Principal Engineer, AI Engagement Lead

Why this role

If you like where you work but want harder problems, faster learning, and teammates who raise your game, read on.

Our clients want AI in every system their people use, internal and public, and they want it now. AI-powered development has made it easier to build a precise, integrated app than to wrestle with another dashboard. OCI is hiring Principal Engineers to lead that work from start to finish: discovery, the rollout plan, the proof of concept, and the production build.

This is a hands-on, AI-first role. You build with GenAI every day. You can vibe code a stable, lightweight business app in days, and you know when to slow down and engineer it properly. You don't need to be the deepest hand-coder on the team. You do need to be deep enough to judge what the AI produced, and strong enough as an architect to keep it stable in production.

Recent engagements like this one

• GenAI delivery tools for a Fortune 500 payments network

• An agentic document-QA platform for a community bank

• AI-accelerated DevOps for an aerospace manufacturer

• MCP connectors for a central bank

What you'll do

• Run lightweight discovery across a client's core business processes and platforms: finance, HR, customer, productivity, and the data underneath.

• Shape a company-wide AI rollout plan with the client's executives and agree on what to tackle first.

• Build the proof of concept yourself, quickly, to show what custom AI-powered apps can do.

• Lead the follow-on build: set the architecture, hold the bar on testing, security, and infrastructure as code, and ship to production in the client's cloud.

• Unblock the team, improve how it works, and coach the OCI engineers on the engagement.

• Serve as the technical point of contact for the client sponsor, and bring what you learn back to OCI.

Typical stack

Claude and Azure OpenAI · Claude Code · MCP · Python and TypeScript · Azure and AWS · Databricks and Snowflake

What we're looking for

• All-in on AI. GenAI coding tools are your main way of building, and you've shipped working business apps that way. You can read and judge Python or TypeScript even if you no longer type most of it.

• Technical depth. Deep in at least one of application development, data engineering, or cloud, and a strong architect across all three.

• Production track record. Technical lead on at least two systems that went live and stayed live, ideally in a regulated industry.

• Real LLM experience. You've built with large language models beyond a demo: retrieval, evaluation, agents, or tool use.

• Business fluency. You can run discovery across core business applications and turn it into a plan an executive will fund.

• Communication. An excellent communicator who's comfortable working directly with executives.

• Leadership. You've led engineers without formal authority and know how to get a team unstuck.

How you'll spend your time

You'll be staffed on one or two client engagements at a time. The rest of your time goes to scoping new work, mentoring, and building the accelerators OCI uses across engagements.

About OCI

Object Computing is a St. Louis software consultancy of about 130 engineers, designers, and technologists. We build AI, data, and cloud systems for clients in financial services, healthcare, aerospace, and government, and we've been shipping production software for over 30 years.

Not actively looking? Apply anyway, or reach out. Some of our best hires started with "just curious."