Principal Engineer, Software Development Engineering (Apps)

We 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. Required:   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. Sandisk is committed to providing equal opportunities to all applicants and employees and will not discriminate against any applicant or employee based on their race, color, ancestry, religion (including religious dress and grooming standards), sex (including pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, breastfeeding or related medical conditions), gender (including a person’s gender identity, gender expression, and gender-related appearance and behavior, whether or not stereotypically associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth), age, national origin, sexual orientation, medical condition, marital status (including domestic partnership status), physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, protected medical and family care leave, Civil Air Patrol status, military and veteran status, or other legally protected characteristics. We also prohibit harassment of any individual on any of the characteristics listed above. Our non-discrimination policy applies to all aspects of employment. We comply with the laws and regulations set forth in the " Know Your Rights: Workplace Discrimination is Illegal ” poster. Our pay transparency policy is available here . Sandisk thrives on the power and potential of diversity. As a global company, we believe the most effective way to embrace the diversity of our customers and communities is to mirror it from within. We believe the fusion of various perspectives results in the best outcomes for our employees, our company, our customers, and the world around us. We are committed to an inclusive environment where every individual can thrive through a sense of belonging, respect and contribution. Sandisk is committed to offering opportunities to applicants with disabilities and ensuring all candidates can successfully navigate our careers website and our hiring process. Please contact us at jobs.accommodations@sandisk.com to advise us of your accommodation request. In your email, please include a description of the specific accommodation you are requesting as well as the job title and requisition number of the position for which you are applying. Based on our experience, we anticipate that the application deadline will be 08/28/2026 (3 months from posting), although we reserve the right to close the application process sooner if we hire an applicant for this position before the application deadline. If we are not able to hire someone from this role before the application deadline, we will update this posting with a new anticipated application deadline. #LI-KH1 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 y