Principal AI App Engineer

Overview

*Application Deadline May 17*

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Who You’Ll Work With

AI, Insights & Solutions

What You’Ll Do

• As an Expert Manager, Software Engineering, you will lead the development and building of software applications that address complex business and technology problems in various industries. You will guide a diverse engineering team through the entire engineering life cycle. Your responsibilities will include designing, developing, optimizing, and deploying cutting-edge software engineering solutions and infrastructure at the production scale required by the world’s largest companies, with a strong focus on ensuring technical delivery supports business strategy, operating model evolution, and sustainable value creation.
• Shape & scope client solutions. Work with Bain consulting teams and product owners to translate business problems into prioritized backlogs and technical roadmaps for cross-functional engineering squads
• Translate technical capabilities into client-ready product and transformation outcomes by shaping product direction, operating model implications, and change management approaches that support adoption and measurable business impact
• Own full-stack design & build. Lead the architecture, development and documentation of AI applications, including coding and integrating third-party services or frameworks that accelerate delivery and long-term maintainability
• Establish AI-native software engineering best practices. Define and enforce standards around component libraries/design systems, automated testing, linting, CI/CD, accessibility and performance optimization
• Develop reusable libraries & accelerators. Create and curate shared code assets that reduce time-to-value across multiple client projects and internal initiatives.
• Lead the full delivery lifecycle. Set quality gates, supervise code reviews, ensure robust unit/integration test coverage, manage release planning, and oversee post-deployment monitoring and incident resolution
• Partner on UI/UX excellence. Collaborate with designers to ship inclusive, responsive interfaces
• Mentor & grow engineers. Provide day-to-day technical coaching for senior and mid-level engineers through pair programming, architecture sessions and constructive feedback
• Upskill client engineering teams. Coach client developers on modern tooling and DevOps/cloud-native practices, ensuring sustainable ownership after Bain’s engagement
• Advance AI-native technology adoption. Champion containerization, infrastructure-as-code, automated observability and secure-by-design principles to improve scalability, reliability and security
• Contribute to communities of practice. Share lessons learned and emerging technology trends through internal forums, brown-bag sessions and knowledge assets
• Support talent acquisition & onboarding. Participate in interviewing, technical assessments and mentoring of new hires to build a high-caliber engineering cohort
• Travel is required. This position requires regional travel away from your home office/primary working location. Travel frequency and destinations will vary based on project needs

Technical Skills & Knowledge

• Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field
• 6+ years of end-to-end experience designing, building and maintaining production-grade full-stack applications
• Experience working directly with business stakeholders to translate strategic objectives into solution, platform products or roadmaps
• 4+ years building server-side services using FastAPI, Node.js/Express, Flask, Django, .NET Core or Java Spring Boot or similar technologies, including the design of APIs
• 3+ years of architecting and operating micro-service ecosystems, emphasizing service discovery, observability, CI/CD automation and blue-/green or canary deployments
• Expert knowledge of Python, JavaScript and/or other programming languages
• Experience with cloud-native delivery on AWS, Azure or GCP, knowledge of managed services, serverless patterns and infrastructure-as-code such as Terraform, CloudFormation or Bicep
• Proficient with containerization and orchestration, Docker, Kubernetes and related tooling (Helm, Argo CD)
• Experience with database architecture across relational (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server) and NoSQL/document stores (MongoDB, DynamoDB, Redis), with solid SQL skills
• Solid computer science fundamentals, data structures, algorithms, object-oriented and functional paradigms, automated testing, performance profiling
• Excellence in software architecture design, including modular, distributed, and cloud-native systems, scalability, resiliency, maintainability, and observability
• Experience with data security, OAuth 2.0/OIDC, JWT, SSO/cloud IAM, encryption in transit, at rest, and awareness of data protection regulations.
• Ideally, experience with modern AI/ML development, working with LLM APIs, prompt engineering, RAG pipelines, agentic SDKs and AI safety
• Ideally, hands-on experience with modern web technologies such as React, Angular, Vue.js, TypeScript, HTML5 and CSS3
• Proven leader and mentor with ability to lead engineering squads, set coding standards, perform rigorous code reviews and up skill junior engineers.
• Agile delivery mindset, practical experience with Scrum or Kanban, story-point estimation, backlog grooming and the use of Git-based workflows, Jira and automated CI/CD pipelines.
• Professional fluency in English

Interpersonal Skills

• Strong interpersonal and communication skills, including the ability to explain and discuss technicalities of solutions, algorithms and techniques with colleagues and clients from other disciplines
• Curiosity, proactivity and critical thinking
• Ability to collaborate with people at all levels and with multi-office/region teams
• Ability to work independently and juggle priorities to thrive in a fast paced and ambiguous environment, while also collaborating as part of a team in complex situations