Principal Software Engineer, AI Solutions & Development

$180,700 - $242,300/Yr

Disney - Chicago, IL

Full-time - Principal

Chicago, IL

1,001-5,000 employees

Motion Picture and Sound Recording Industries

About the position

At Disney Experiences (DX) Tech & Digital, we are dedicated to creating world-class immersive experiences for consumers through our Parks & Resorts, Cruise Lines, and Disney Vacation Club. Our team is responsible for the end-to-end digital and physical Guest experience for all technology initiatives across various sectors including Attractions & Entertainment, Food & Beverage, Resorts & Transportation, and Merchandise. With a global team of nearly 3,000 professionals, we focus on developing and implementing digital technology strategies that enhance our businesses worldwide. In this Principal Engineer role within the JedAI Platform team, you will report to the Sr Manager of AI Engagement and be recognized as an expert in Generative AI across Disney Experiences. Your primary responsibility will be to lead a squad of engineers in delivering proof of concepts (POCs) for large language model (LLM) applications. This position requires you to deliver high-quality AI solutions for highly visible strategic projects, necessitating active collaboration with cross-functional teams. We are looking for a candidate who is passionate about Generative AI and LLMs, with a proven track record of delivering innovative AI applications. You should be able to lead technical discussions confidently, make critical decisions, and implement best practices across the organization. Effective collaboration with cross-functional stakeholders and the ability to communicate complex ideas to both technical and non-technical audiences are essential for success in this role.

Responsibilities

• Lead a team of engineers and analysts to deliver POCs of LLM applications, driving technical decisions and best practices.
• Architect, design, and develop AI applications, integrating with Google Vertex, Microsoft OpenAI Azure, and other LLM suites.
• Design and implement effective prompts, configure LLM settings, and optimize performance through prompt crafting, RAG, fine-tuning and other techniques.
• Lead and influence cross-functional teams to define requirements, manage user expectations, and deliver high-quality AI solutions.
• Develop and maintain API endpoints, front-end features, and full-stack applications that leverage LLMs and Generative AI models.
• Implement AI applications that comply with ethical guidelines and legal standards, particularly regarding data privacy and user consent.
• Integrate analytics and monitoring tools to track user interactions, application performance, and the efficiency of LLM integrations.
• Mentor, motivate, and develop the technical capabilities of existing engineering team to cultivate a culture of collaboration and excitement.
• Stay up-to-date with emerging trends and advancements in Generative AI, LLMs, and related technologies.
• Continuously learn and adapt to emerging changes in AI and LLMs to ensure that the approach the team takes is always at the forefront of innovation while maintaining backward integrability.
• Drive the adoption of new tools, frameworks, and techniques to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the team's work.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in full-stack software development, with a strong focus on building enterprise-scale distributed and cloud or hybrid-cloud applications.
• Regarded as an expert in the growing field of AI and developed AI solutions, prototypes, including GenAI and LLMs.
• Experience with PyTorch, TensorFlow, ONNX, LangChain, Kubernetes, and Docker.
• Deep understanding of AI frameworks including Huggingface, semantic search, RAG, LLM agents, AgentGPT, orchestration, plugins, and LLM Ops.
• Experience with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures or frameworks like Langchain for building LLM-powered applications.
• Proficiency in programming languages such as Python, Java, JavaScript, and experience with frameworks like React and Node.js.
• Experience with cloud platforms such as Google Vertex, Microsoft OpenAI Azure, AWS, and Azure, using various solutions for developing integrations, APIs, and AI/ML applications.
• Familiarity with databases (e.g., MongoDB, CosmosDB) and big data tools (e.g., Hive, Hadoop, Hbase) and data visualization tools such as Matplotlib, Seaborn, or Plotly.
• Strong understanding of data preprocessing techniques for LLMs, including tokenization, embedding, and feature engineering, to optimize model performance and accuracy.
• Experience creating strategy and process for multi-release code management and CI/CD pipeline using tools like Git, Jenkins, and Artifactory.
• Ability to strategically influence and communicate complex ideas, anticipating varying perspectives and objections.

Nice-to-haves

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience.

Benefits

• Medical benefits including health insurance coverage.
• Financial benefits including a bonus and/or long-term incentive units as part of the compensation package.
• Opportunities for professional development and career growth.
• Flexible work arrangements depending on the position offered.