Principal Engineer, AI Native Quality – Safety

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Collaborate with engineering, platform, InfoSec, SRE, and Compliance teams to establish layered safety controls.

• Develop pre-production verification processes, including evaluations, invariant tests, and risk-based test selection.

• Integrate automated safety measures into development and delivery processes.

• Champion the “Ratify Continuously, Expose Deliberately” framework through continuous shadow soak, ratified releases, and intentional per-tenant exposure.

• Specify system invariants and design controls to prevent access to prohibited states.

• Create agentic systems to isolate unreliable tests and transition comprehensive test suites to nightly executions.

• Define ambiguous safety challenges and suggest innovative solutions.

• Enhance agent autonomy as verification processes mature.

• Design risk-based approval mechanisms for pull requests.

• Implement integrity-protected channels utilizing signed sources and permission brokers.

• Ensure agents lack authority over their guardrails, encompassing CI gates, branch protection, and audit loggers.

• Mandate that privileged actuators independently verify agent claims prior to any actions.

• Evaluate, monitor, and observe AI models in real-world settings, ensuring containment and rollback for unsafe actions.

• Elevate the technical standard by establishing quality as the default expectation.

• Mentor and challenge Staff+ engineers.

• Collaborate with engineering and product leadership to strike a balance between velocity and production risk.

• Create runbooks, decision logs, and tests that are easily transferable and adaptable.

• Contribute across various product domains.

⛳️ Requirements

• A minimum of 8 years of experience in building and scaling complex software systems.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Security, or a related field; or 6+ years with a Master’s degree; or a PhD with 4+ years of experience; or equivalent practical experience.

• Proven experience utilizing AI as a primary development partner.

• Background in designing safety-critical, high-assurance, or redundant systems.

• Expertise in establishing CI/CD and testing infrastructure at scale.

• Experience in designing evaluations for LLMs or AI agents.

• Familiarity with observability and monitoring within production systems.

• Knowledge of least-privilege access, signed provenance, and policy-as-code.

• Proficiency in progressive delivery methods, including canary releases, traffic mirroring, and automated rollback.

• Experience with TDD, BDD, load, stress, chaos, invariant, or mutation testing.

• History of working in highly regulated industries, such as financial services.

• Demonstrated success in leading large, cross-pillar technical initiatives.

• Strong written communication abilities and a tendency to produce durable, valuable documentation.

• A leadership approach that empowers team members rather than fostering dependency.

• A high standard for quality in AI-generated outputs.

• Reliable internet connectivity when working remotely outside a Workiva office.

🏝️ Benefits

• An annual discretionary bonus typically awarded.

• Restricted Stock Units provided at the time of hire.

• 401(k) matching program.

• Comprehensive employee benefits package.

• Flexible work location options: either office-based or remote from any location within the employee’s country of employment.

• Reasonable accommodations available for applicants with disabilities.