Principal Platform Integration Engineer - Central Engineering

About the role

The Principal Engineer is the lead Architect and hands-on builder of our unified AI Platform as a Service. This role is responsible for transforming raw foundation model capabilities into a scalable, multi-tenant reasoning stack that empowers the entire enterprise to build, deploy, and manage semantic discovery, conversational intelligence, and autonomous agents.

Responsibilities

• Balances 40% hands-on systems development with 60% platform strategy, personally coding the core orchestration engines, standardized capability servers, and universal trust guardrails.
• Provides technical leadership to others in the IT division and business to address ongoing business needs.
• Documents the application infrastructure and teaches/shares with others as necessary.
• Serves as senior escalation point for complex issues and ensures timely recovery from outages, performs root cause analysis, and implements preventative measures.
• Maintains integration infrastructure health and incorporates AI-assisted observability and anomaly detection capabilities where appropriate.
• Works with vendors, business, and application development teams, and other technical teams to meet the needs of the project.
• Assists/provides project managers with work breakdown of tasks and effort estimates.
• Takes responsibility for the technical content (architecture and design), integrity, and quality of the solution.
• Establishes high-level models that guide solution architecture design, sub-architecture, or deployment and reviews with all interested parties.
• Defines and implements plans to address the service's integration points with other services.

Requirements

• 7+ years’ experience installing, configuring, and maintaining DataPower, Apigee, or other similar technologies.
• 7+ years’ experience deploying services or APIs.
• 7+ years’ working with SAML, XACML, OAUTH security standards.
• 7+ years’ designing service registries and repositories.
• 7+ years’ scripting to automate operational tasks.
• Ability to quickly understand current environments (including legacy systems) and use that information to build stable, responsive, and secure solutions.
• Understanding of Identity Access Management patterns, concepts, and best practices.
• Experience building solutions in a distributed hybrid multi-cloud architecture and ability to understand interactions from end to end.
• Solid understanding of ESB patterns, Data Integration Services patterns, and middleware tools (WAS, etc.) patterns, concepts, and best practices.
• Proven ability to lead various teams within the development lifecycle.
• Process improvement skills and demonstrated ability to effectively troubleshoot and provide solutions.
• Solid negotiation, delegation, and team-building skills.
• Demonstrated AI fluency: comfort learning and working alongside AI tools, evaluating their outputs critically, and guiding a team through responsible adoption.
• Recommended Experience integrating with cloud-native AI platforms such as Google Vertex AI, Google Document AI, or Azure AI Search.
• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted developer tools like GitHub Copilot, Gemini Code Assist, or Microsoft Copilot in Power Automate.
• Hands-on experience with modern AI integration patterns, specifically focusing on data provenance for RAG pipelines and managing safe, bounded data traversals for intelligent workflows.
• Proficient in Active Directory, Access Management and Provisioning, ESB integration patterns and implementations, SAML, WMQ (WebSphere MQ / IBM MQ), WMB (WebSphere Message Broker / IIB), WSRR (WebSphere Service Registry and Repository), Informatica, and WAS (WebSphere Application Server).
• Experience with event-driven data streaming platforms such as Apache Kafka.
• Experience with SOAP, REST, XML, JSON, XSLT, Javascript, Java.
• Familiarity with application and service integration patterns.
• Experience with legacy and partner integration platforms (ie, Axway, EDI).
• Azure certifications.
• Experience with Kubernetes.
• Good understanding of CI/CD and Azure DevOps.
• Familiarity with Tivoli and other monitoring technologies.
• Proficient in Google Workspace applications, including Sheets, Docs, Slides, and Gmail.

Qualifications

• Fluency with AI and automation capabilities.
• Strong technical background in software development and integration.
• Experience with cloud platforms and services.
• Knowledge of security standards and best practices.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team.
• Excellent communication and problem-solving skills.

Skills

• AI and Intelligent Systems Integration Architects
• Data Integration Services
• ESB Patterns
• Middleware Tools
• Service Registries
• API Management
• Data Flow Design
• Event-Driven Architecture
• Security Configuration
• Cloud-Native AI Platforms
• Azure Certifications
• Kubernetes
• CI/CD
• Google Workspace

Benefits

Comprehensive benefits package including paid time off, health benefits, health care reimbursement account, dependent care assistance plan, short-term disability and long-term disability insurance, AD&D insurance, life insurance, 401(k), stock purchase plan to eligible employees.

Pay

$160,000 - $230,000, Bonus and Restricted Stock Unit (RSU) eligible

Schedule

N/A

Application Instructions

If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request to IT-Recruiting@costco.com