Principal Engineer

Role

MSI Data is hiring a Principal Engineer (individual contributor) to be the primary technical builder for AI initiatives across the application suite. The role focuses on designing and implementing production‑grade systems that integrate LLMs, autonomous agents, and data pipelines while optimizing performance, reliability, and observability.

Key Responsibilities

• Act as the lead developer for major ML/AI features: write core logic, integrate APIs, and build production systems.
• Rapidly move from prototypes and vibe‑coded demos to robust, production‑ready Python/TypeScript services.
• Implement and maintain CI/CD and testing pipelines tailored to AI workflows (offline/online evals, prompt regression tests, cost/latency budgets).
• Build sophisticated autonomous agents, including function calling, tool use, and conversation/state management.
• Develop features using REST APIs, React, Drizzle, PostgreSQL and Next.js; implement streaming responses (WebSockets/SSE) for low-latency UX.
• Optimize latency and scale: caching, connection management, async task handling, and Core Web Vitals against SLAs.
• Integrate AI services into existing applications via internal APIs and microservices.
• Improve reliability with robust error handling, retry/fallback mechanisms, and guardrails for non-deterministic AI outputs.
• Instrument observability for token usage, cost per request, and response quality.

Requirements

• 10+ years software engineering experience with a strong backend systems emphasis.
• 3+ years hands‑on experience integrating LLMs into production and orchestrating AI workflows.
• Proficiency in Python and/or TypeScript; experienced polyglot developers are welcome.
• Deep, practical experience with OpenAI and/or Anthropic APIs and AI orchestration tools (LangChain, LangGraph).
• Experience with vector databases such as Pinecone or Milvus and handling unstructured data.
• Strong SQL skills and ability to build data pipelines to feed AI systems.
• Proven experience building high‑throughput, low‑latency systems and implementing caching and connection management.
• Strong software engineering practices: code quality, code review, CI/CD, and testing for AI systems.

Tech & Tools (explicitly mentioned)

OpenAI, Anthropic, LangChain, LangGraph, Pinecone, Milvus, Python, TypeScript, React, Drizzle, Postgresql, Next.js, REST APIs, WebSockets, SSE, CI/CD

Why this role matters

This is a greenfield, high‑impact IC role with technical autonomy to build the core engines of a new AI product line; the engineer’s code will directly determine product efficiency and intelligence.