Principal AI Engineer

Overview

Position: Principal AI Engineer

Location: US Remote - hybrid if located within 30 miles from Santa Ana, CA or Austin, TX (4 days on-site)

Compensation: starting at $180,000/yr+ depending on experience

*Actual compensation may vary from posting based on geographic location, work experience, education, and/or skill level.

Position Summary: The Principal AI Engineer serves as a senior technical leader within our technology and strategy organization, responsible for defining and driving the enterprise-wide artificial intelligence and machine learning roadmap at New American Funding. In this high-impact individual contributor role, you will architect, build, and deploy production-grade intelligent systems that revolutionize loan origination, streamline underwriting processes, and elevate the borrower experience. By bridging the gap between state-of-the-art AI research and practical business applications, you will empower our lending operations with cutting-edge automation, predictive analytics, and generative AI capabilities. Your technical leadership will be pivotal in maintaining NAF's competitive advantage in modern digital lending, ensuring our solutions operate with high precision, speed, and strict regulatory compliance.

Disclaimer: Identity Verification checks are in place throughout the Candidate journey to prevent candidate fraud.

Responsibilities

AI Development & Engineering

• Design, build, test, and deploy advanced AI applications, intelligent agents, and automated workflows that support business and technology objectives.• Lead hands-on development of generative AI solutions utilizing large language models (LLMs), agentic AI frameworks, and emerging AI technologies.• Develop scalable AI services, APIs, and integrations that connect AI capabilities with enterprise applications and data platforms.• Build solutions utilizing retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), semantic search, vector databases, and contextual data retrieval.• Develop and optimize prompts, tool integrations, orchestration logic, and agent workflows to improve accuracy, reliability, and performance.• Write high-quality, maintainable code while following established engineering standards and development practices.

AI Architecture & Technical Strategy

• Define technical architecture and engineering standards for enterprise AI solutions, ensuring scalability, reliability, security, and maintainability.• Evaluate AI models, frameworks, development tools, and emerging technologies to recommend solutions aligned with business needs.• Partner with Engineering and Technology leadership to establish reusable AI components, development patterns, and integration frameworks.• Make technical design decisions that balance innovation, performance, cost, and long-term platform sustainability.

• Provide technical guidance for complex AI initiatives, identifying dependencies, architectural risks, and implementation considerations.

Agentic AI & Intelligent Automation

• Design and implement AI agents capable of executing multi-step tasks, interacting with enterprise systems, and supporting intelligent workflow automation.• Develop agent orchestration and tool-calling capabilities that enable AI solutions to interact with business applications and data.• Identify opportunities to reduce manual processes, simplify workflows, and improve productivity through AI-driven automation.• Build AI solutions that support document intelligence, data extraction, decision support, and process optimization.• Evaluate agent performance and continuously refine solutions to improve reliability, accuracy, and business outcomes.

Enterprise Integration & Collaboration

• Partner with Product Managers, Engineering teams, Data teams, and business stakeholders to understand requirements and translate them into technical solutions.• Integrate AI capabilities into existing enterprise platforms, applications, and business workflows.• Collaborate with Engineering teams to ensure AI solutions align with enterprise architecture, development standards, and integration requirements.• Provide technical recommendations during product discovery, solution design, and development planning.• Support cross-functional initiatives that expand AI capabilities across NAF's technology ecosystem.

Technical Leadership & Innovation

• Serve as a senior technical subject matter expert for AI engineering and emerging AI technologies.• Mentor engineers and share best practices in AI development, architecture, coding, and implementation.• Lead technical design discussions, code reviews, and solution evaluations for complex AI initiatives.• Promote AI-enabled development practices and tools that improve engineering efficiency and delivery quality.• Stay current on advances in generative AI, agentic AI, machine learning, and AI engineering frameworks.• Identify and prototype innovative solutions that can be scaled into enterprise capabilities.

Delivery & Continuous Improvement

• Own technical delivery of complex AI solutions from initial design and proof of concept through production implementation.• Partner with Product and business teams to define success measures and evaluate business impact.• Continuously improve AI development processes, reusable components, and deployment practices.• Troubleshoot complex technical challenges and provide hands-on support for production AI solutions.• Communicate technical progress, risks, recommendations, and outcomes to Engineering leadership and cross-functional stakeholders.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, or a related technical field preferred.• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant hands-on experience developing AI-powered applications and solutions.• 3+ years of hands-on experience with machine learning, generative AI, LLM applications, or related AI engineering technologies.• Advanced proficiency in Python and experience with modern software development frameworks, APIs, and cloud-based architecture.• Demonstrated experience designing and deploying production-ready AI solutions, including LLM-based applications and intelligent agents.• Experience with agentic AI frameworks, RAG architectures, vector databases, embeddings, and AI orchestration tools.• Experience integrating AI solutions with enterprise applications, APIs, databases, and cloud services.• Strong understanding of software architecture, distributed systems, testing, CI/CD, and production engineering practices.• Experience with cloud AI platforms such as Google Cloud Vertex AI, Azure AI, or AWS Bedrock.• Familiarity with AI evaluation, observability, model performance monitoring, security, and responsible AI practices.• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to design solutions for complex business challenges.• Demonstrated ability to provide technical leadership, mentor engineers, and influence engineering best practices without formal management authority.• Excellent communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders.• Experience with AI-assisted development tools such as Cursor, GitHub Copilot, or similar platforms preferred.• Mortgage, financial services, fintech, or other regulated industry experience preferred.

Work Authorization: Must be able to verify identity and employment eligibility to work in the U.S.

Other Duties: This job profile is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of job duties and responsibilities, as one may perform additional related duties as assigned in order to meet the needs of the organization.

Physical Demands: The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. Must be able to lift up to ten pounds. Primary functions require sufficient physical ability and mobility to work in an office setting; to stand or sit for prolonged periods of time; to occasionally stoop, bend, kneel, crouch, reach, and twist; to lift, carry, push, and/or pull light to moderate amounts of weight; to operate office equipment requiring repetitive hand movement and fine coordination including use of a keyboard; and to verbally communicate to exchange information. VISION: See in the normal visual range with or without correction. HEARING: Hear in the normal audio range with or without correction.

[EOE/M/F/D/V. Drug-free workplace.]

Pay Transparency Disclosure:If based in New American Funding’s offices, this role has the annual base salary range stated below.

Job level and actual compensation will be decided based on factors including, but not limited to, individual qualifications objectively assessed during the interview process (including skills and prior relevant experience, potential impact, and scope of role), market demands, and specific work location. The listed range is a guideline, and the range for this role may be modified. For roles that are available to be filled remotely, the pay range is localized according to employee work location by a factor of between 80% and 100% of range. Please discuss your specific work location with your recruiter for more information.

New American Funding offers competitive package of additional benefits, including health, dental & vision, retirement with company contribution, parental leave , mental health & wellness benefits, and generous PTO. New American Funding also offers sales incentive pay for most sales roles and an annual bonus plan for eligible non-sales roles. New American Funding’s compensation and benefits are subject to change and may be modified in the future.

New American Funding recruiters may contact candidates through LinkedIn, phone, text message, or email. Official email communications will come from an address ending in @nafinc.com. We will only request sensitive personal information through our secure application and onboarding systems – not through email, social media, text message, or instant messaging. New American Funding will never request payment from candidates at any stage of the recruiting process.

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