Principal AI Engineer - Aerospace & Defense

Job Description

Our Aerospace & Defense business helps the world's leading airlines, MROs, OEMs and defense operators keep complex fleets and platforms mission-ready — managing the full maintenance, asset and service lifecycle at scale. We are reimagining how that software is built and delivered around AI, and we are investing in engineers who can put AI to work both inside our products and in how we build them.

You operate forward deployed — working shoulder-to-shoulder with A&D customers in their own environments — to ship AI-powered mobile capabilities that connect IFS to the systems that run their operations. This is a Principal-level role: you are the person others build toward, setting technical direction across product groups, carrying deep expertise in Applied AI and Forward Deployed Engineering, and taking end-to-end ownership with a you-build-it, you-run-it mindset — from design and development through testing, deployment and operational reliability in the field.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated, hands-on experience leveraging AI for building products — using AI-assisted and agentic development tooling as a core part of your workflow — and for building AI within products — shipping production AI capabilities using ML integration, prompt engineering, RAG, agentic architectures, evaluation and testing, and MLOps.
• Mobile engineering: a proven track record building and shipping production mobile applications, with the depth to set the technical direction for a mobile product. Native iOS development experience is strongly preferred given this role's focus on our next-generation aviation-maintenance mobility solution.
• Principal-level impact: a proven track record as a recognised technical authority who drives strategy and delivery across multiple teams or product groups, with the depth to operate as a role model in the most complex, large-scope work.
• Forward-deployed strength: substantial experience deploying, integrating and operating enterprise software directly in customer environments, including integration with ERP, CRM, IoT and legacy systems, and owning solution architecture in customer context.
• Full-lifecycle engineering: strong foundations across the delivery lifecycle — design and development, quality and testing, cloud and DevOps, and security — with proficiency in modern general-purpose programming languages beyond any single domain framework.
• Leadership and ownership: end-to-end ownership with a you-build-it, you-run-it mindset, excellent communication with technical and non-technical audiences, and a track record of growing the capability of the engineers and teams around you.

Nice to Have

• Experience working in or with Aerospace & Defense organisations, or on solutions for asset, maintenance, MRO or fleet-readiness management.
• Experience with other enterprise asset management (EAM), field service or maintenance-management solutions.
• Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience of agile delivery and of working with globally distributed teams.