Job DescriptionWe are hiring a Principal Engineer to serve as an architect for our Enterprise AI platform for engineering workflows. This role partners with the existing platform architect to set technical direction across Nexus's hybrid on-prem and cloud architecture, lead design for agentic systems, MCP ecosystem, LLM gateway, memory and knowledge layers, and ensure the platform scales securely and reliably as adoption grows across FPG.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:- Architecture Leadership: Co-own end-to-end architecture for the Nexus platform across hybrid on-prem and cloud environments. Drive design decisions for agentic orchestration, MCP ecosystem, LLM gateway, memory and knowledge systems, observability, and platform applications.
- Technical Strategy: Define multi-quarter technical direction in partnership with engineering leadership. Translate platform vision into actionable architecture roadmaps that balance velocity, scalability, security, and operational maturity.
- Agentic Systems Design: Architect production-grade agentic workflows using LangGraph, Deep Agents, and modern agent frameworks. Establish patterns for tool use, multi-agent coordination, evaluation, and safety.
- Platform Standards: Establish and evolve standards for service design, API contracts, security, identity, observability, and developer experience across Nexus components and purpose-built applications.
- Cross-Functional Influence: Partner with InfoSec, Cloud Infrastructure, IAM, Networking, and product engineering teams. Lead architecture reviews, represent the platform in enterprise architecture forums, and shepherd designs through governance processes (ISAR, STARC, CAB).
- Technical Mentorship: Coach Staff and Senior engineers on system design, distributed systems, AI engineering, and production excellence. Raise the technical bar across the team through design reviews, code reviews, and architecture deep dives.
- Risk and Reliability: Identify architectural risks early, drive remediation, and lead the platform's evolution toward stronger environment separation, observability, and incident response maturity.
- Innovation: Track advances in LLMs, agentic frameworks, and AI infrastructure. Evaluate emerging technologies and lead targeted POCs that translate into platform capabilities.
QualificationsRequired: - Master's or PhD in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science, Computer Science, or a related field.
- 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 5+ years in architecture or technical leadership roles, with demonstrated impact designing and operating large-scale AI/ML, platform, or distributed systems in production.
- Deep proficiency in Python; strong working knowledge of TypeScript/JavaScript, React, and at least one systems language (Go, Java, or C++).
- Expert-level understanding of modern AI/ML stacks: LangGraph, LangChain, LlamaIndex, PyTorch or TensorFlow, and the Hugging Face ecosystem.
- Strong grasp of LLM internals, transformers, embeddings, RAG architectures, fine-tuning approaches, and evaluation methodologies.
- Production experience with LLM providers and gateways (Anthropic, OpenAI or equivalent), and deep familiarity with the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and agentic design patterns.
- Proven ability to design distributed systems, microservices, REST/GraphQL APIs, event-driven architectures, and high-throughput data pipelines.
- Strong experience with Kubernetes, Docker, and operating workloads in hybrid on-prem and cloud topologies.
- Working knowledge of relational (PostgreSQL), NoSQL (MongoDB, Elasticsearch), in-memory (Redis / Valkey), and vector databases, with judgment on when to use each.
- Solid background in enterprise security and identity: OAuth, OIDC, SSO, RBAC, secrets management, and data governance.
Preferred:- Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to influence engineering, product, and executive audiences.
- Demonstrated ability to lead through influence across organizational boundaries and align diverse stakeholders behind a technical direction.
- Strong product sense and pragmatic judgment on tradeoffs between speed, scalability, and long-term maintainability.
- Track record of mentoring senior engineers and elevating overall team capability.
- Exceptional ability to decompose ambiguous, large-scale problems, design pragmatic architectures, and debug complex issues across the AI/ML and infrastructure stack.
Compensation & Benefits Details- An employee's pay position within the salary range may be based on several factors including but not limited to (1) relevant education; qualifications; certifications; and experience; (2) skills, ability, knowledge of the job; (3) performance, contribution and results; (4) geographic location; (5) shift; (6) internal and external equity; and (7) business and organizational needs.
- The salary range is what we believe to be the range of possible compensation for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range and this range is only applicable for jobs to be performed in California, Colorado, New York or remote jobs that can be performed in California, Colorado and New York. This range may be modified in the future.
- You will be eligible to participate in Sandisk's Short-Term Incentive (STI) Plan, which provides incentive awards based on Company and individual performance. Depending on your role and your performance, you may be eligible to participate in our annual Long-Term Incentive (LTI) program, which consists of restricted stock units (RSUs) or cash equivalents, pursuant to the terms of the LTI plan. Please note that not all roles are eligible to participate in the LTI program, and not all roles are eligible for equity under the LTI plan. RSU awards are also available to eligible new hires, subject to Sandisk's Standard Terms and Conditions for Restricted Stock Unit Awards.
- We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid vacation time; paid sick leave; medical/dental/vision insurance; life, accident and disability insurance; tax-advantaged flexible spending and health savings accounts; employee assistance program; other voluntary benefit programs such as supplemental life and AD&D, legal plan, pet insurance, critical illness, accident and hospital indemnity; tuition reimbursement; transit; the Applause Program, employee stock purchase plan, and the Sandisk's Savings 401(k) Plan.
- Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, commission, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company's sole discretion, consistent with the law.
