Principal Engineer, Agent Platform

About Gap Inc. At Gap Inc., we create culture as much as we create clothes. Our ambition is to become a high-performing house of iconic American brands that shape culture. Our portfolio—Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic, and Athleta—each brings a distinct point of view to how we show up in the world and serve our customers. Old Navy democratizes style with quality and value for all. Gap champions originality through essential pieces that celebrate individuality. Banana Republic is rooted in a spirit of discovery, creating modern pieces inspired by craftsmanship and travel. Athleta champions the Power of She through confidence, strength, and movement. We’re driven by a shared purpose: to bridge gaps—between people, perspectives, and possibilities—to create a better world. We’re building a team that performs at a high level—people who think boldly, take ownership, and turn ideas into impact. If you’re ready to learn fast and help shape what’s next, you’ll fit right in. About The Role We are building the enterprise AI agent platform that teams across the company will use to create, deploy, govern, and operate AI-powered solutions at scale. As a Principal Engineer, you will help define the technical foundation for agent development across the organization, building the services, frameworks, and guardrails that make AI agents secure, reliable, observable, and easy to adopt. This is a hands-on engineering role focused on architecture, software design, and platform development. You will work across AI, distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, security, and governance to deliver a platform that enables product and engineering teams to move quickly while meeting enterprise standards for security, compliance, and operational excellence. What you'll do Design and build core platform services that enable enterprise AI agent development and operationsDefine the architecture, engineering patterns, and technical standards for the AI agent platformDevelop and maintain a centralized model gateway for routing, governance, resiliency, and cost managementBuild agent runtime capabilities that support long-running workflows, orchestration, and human-in-the-loop processesDesign secure identity, authorization, and policy enforcement mechanisms for agents and toolsEstablish platform capabilities for context management, memory, retrieval, and data isolationCreate testing, evaluation, and release frameworks that ensure agent quality, safety, and performanceImplement observability, auditability, and operational tooling for monitoring and troubleshooting agent behaviorPartner with Security, Data Governance, and Cloud Infrastructure teams to define platform controls and guardrailsMentor engineers, influence technical direction, and raise engineering standards across multiple teams Who you are Extensive experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems in productionStrong software engineering background with expert-level Python development skillsHands-on experience delivering production LLM, generative AI, or agent-based solutionsDeep understanding of agent architectures, orchestration patterns, and enterprise AI platformsExperienced with retrieval systems, embeddings, vector search, and context management strategiesKnowledgeable in AI evaluation, testing methodologies, and quality assurance for non-deterministic systemsProficient with Google Cloud services including Vertex AI, Gemini, GKE, Cloud Run, BigQuery, and Pub/SubExperienced with cloud security, workload identity, OAuth, policy-as-code, and secure-by-design architecturesStrong understanding of distributed system reliability patterns, including resiliency, retries, observability, and fault toleranceProven ability to influence technical direction, drive adoption of architectural standards, and lead through expertise rather than authority Salary Range: $209,700.00 - $272,600.00 Employee pay will vary based on factors such as qualifications, experience, skill level, competencies and work location. We will meet minimum wage or minimum of the pay range (whichever is higher) based on city, county and state requirements. Benefits at Gap Inc. Merchandise discount for our brands: 50% off regular-priced merchandise at Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic and Athleta, and 30% off at Outlet for all employees.One of the most competitive Paid Time Off plans in the industry.*Employees can take up to five “on the clock” hours each month to volunteer at a charity of their choice.*Extensive 401(k) plan with company matching for contributions up to four percent of an employee’s base pay.*Employee stock purchase plan.*Medical, dental, vision and life insurance.*See more of the benefits we offer.For eligible employees Gap Inc. is an equal-opportunity employer and is committed to providing a workplace free from harassment and discrimination. We are committed to recruiting, hiring, training and promoting qualified people of all backgrounds, and make all employment decisions without regard to any protected status. We have received numerous awards for our long-held commitment to equality and will continue to foster a diverse and inclusive environment of belonging. In 2022, we were recognized by Forbes as one of the World's Best Employers and one of the Best Employers for Diversity.