Principal Software Engineer - AI

About the role

New Balance is hiring a Principal Software Engineer for its Enterprise AI Solutions team. The role focuses on designing and delivering enterprise AI assistants and automations to improve internal workflows, decision-making, and operational efficiency.

Location

Brighton, Massachusetts, United States of America; occasional travel to Lawrence, MA.

Responsibilities

• Research and deliver AI-based solutions across the company
• Improve internal workflows, decision-making, and operational efficiency
• Design and build enterprise-grade AI assistants and automations using RAG and agentic AI
• Architect autonomous and semi-autonomous agents for multi-step business processes
• Partner with leadership in Finance, Supply Chain, and Product to identify automation opportunities
• Translate business needs into scalable AI solutions
• Lead selection and implementation of models, tools, frameworks, and SDKs across open source and Microsoft AI ecosystem
• Ensure solutions meet enterprise standards for security, privacy, and cost-efficiency
• Design human-in-the-loop systems and technical guardrails
• Oversee the full lifecycle from PoC to production-grade integration with internal APIs and databases
• Act as a subject matter expert on LLM orchestration
• Guide other engineers on best practices for RAG and agentic reasoning
• Work closely with cross-functional partners, data and platform teams, and other engineers
• Design, implement, and deploy AI-enabled systems that are reliable and maintainable
• Use visual communication to explain AI logic to business stakeholders
• Base the position in the Brighton, MA corporate office
• Travel occasionally to Lawrence, MA
• Work in a hybrid model with three in-office days per week
• Use Work from Anywhere for four weeks per calendar year
• Support enterprise systems across operations, supply chain, finance, product, and corporate services

Requirements

• 10+ years of software development experience
• 4+ years focused on AI/Machine Learning and Large Language Models
• Hands-on experience with LangChain, LangGraph, or Semantic Kernel
• Experience with Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Search, Microsoft Copilot Studio, and related areas
• Expert-level Python skills
• Comfortable with React or similar front-end development
• Strong background in designing RESTful APIs
• Experience integrating AI agents with ERPs, CRMs, and SQL/NoSQL databases
• Ability to choose the right AI approach for the business problem
• Ability to explain complex AI logic and agentic workflows to non-technical stakeholders

Qualifications

• Degree in Computer Science, Data Science, or a closely related field

Skills

• LLM
• RAG
• Agentic AI
• LangChain
• Azure OpenAI Service
• LangGraph
• Semantic Kernel
• Azure AI Search
• Microsoft Copilot Studio
• Microsoft Foundry
• Python
• React
• REST API
• SQL
• NoSQL
• AI
• Machine Learning
• LLM orchestration
• ERPs
• CRMs
• Prompt engineering
• Fine-tuning
• Human-in-the-loop systems
• Technical guardrails
• Enterprise backends
• LLMOps
• Chainlit
• Streamlit
• Prompt injection mitigation
• Secure data handling

Nice to Have

• Experience with Azure AI Search as a vector store
• Familiarity with persistent memory and long-term state management for multi-session AI agents
• Experience setting up LLMOps pipelines for model performance, drift, and hallucination monitoring
• Familiarity with Chainlit or Streamlit for rapid internal prototyping
• Understanding of prompt injection mitigation in GenAI applications

Pay

$144.6K–216.9K/yr

Schedule

• Full-time
• Hybrid (three in-office days per week)