Principal AI Engineer

Scheduling isn't simply filling shifts. It's finding the sweet spot that enables businesses to grow and team members to enjoy the perfect work/life balance.

At Planday from Xero, we aim to use Agentic AI to build a future where managers can seamlessly free up invaluable time for their business and teams. We're not just building software: we're on a mission to make shift work more human, to change work/life balance from a luxury to a reality for all shift workers. We're using advanced technology to help humans reach their full potential. At work and in life.

Founded in 2004, Planday is headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark and helps create perfect schedules for hundreds of thousands of users across the world.

Are you a Principal Engineer with experience in solving real-world customer problems using predicative and generative AI? At Planday we help build successful businesses and improve the working lives of ordinary people, and we have a job for you. 

How you’ll make an impact

As a Principal AI Engineer, you’ll be at the forefront of innovation, leading the design and development of groundbreaking AI-powered user experiences for millions of users. You’ll collaborate with brilliant minds across Planday to propel our company and our customers into the next age of technology. As a Principal Engineer (IC5) it will be for you to define how and where you can be most effective. In addition to your individual contribution you will help grow education strategies for AI in traditional teams, apply a growth mindset to internal AI automation projects and act as an AI champion for Planday internally and externally. A Principal Engineer at Planday exhibits leadership qualities, but doesn’t have line management responsibilities.

The role is based in London, but will require some travel to the engineering teams in Copenhagen and Denmark. You will report into the VP Of Engineering, and will work directly with the C-suite at times.

What you’ll do

• Create software: Care deeply about customer problems and technical excellence, develop high quality and scalable software, as well as frameworks and coach others to do the same. Relentlessly automate any manual processes. Contribute to technical solution designs that embrace a quality-first approach. Participate in practice reviews as a role model for giving and receiving feedback.
• Test software: Invent and lead on sophisticated testing activities that effectively and efficiently reveal product quality across a range of risk areas and quality criteria. Understand where we can be fuzzy and where we need to be idempotent. Planday’s customers rely on our software for business critical activities and the use of AI cannot be to the detriment of this. 
• Resolve issues: Efficiently assess the causes and identify solutions for development or production issues, and effectively communicate the impact to colleagues. Recognise common patterns of failure to mitigate issues before they reach production. Proactively participate in incident responses and lead post-mortems.
• Engineering standards & frameworks: Contribute to Planday's engineering standards and frameworks. Work closely with Team Leads and other Principal Engineers to apply standards to software and delivery processes.
• Continuous improvement: Proactively maintain, grow and share knowledge of development technologies used in the development of Planday’s software applications.
• Deliver infrastructure in a production environment: Champion automation of monitoring delivery processes. Coach and support engineers to ensure all software is running as expected and proactively works to prevent customer facing problems.
• Modern software and delivery practices: Be a proactive champion of business and engineering agile and delivery practices who coaches and develops others in this space in order to ensure constant learning and value creation. 
• Recruitment: Lead interview design and participate in interviews and recruitment processes.
• Champion AI: Lead on AI best practices, where AI should and shouldn’t be used, consult on internal AI automation in other parts of the business. 

Success looks like

• Live Planday’s vision and values: Keep Planday’s vision and values at the forefront of decision-making and actions. Communicate and help others understand the importance of the vision and values. Translate the vision and values into day-to-day activities and behaviours.
• Communication skills: Proactively share information, actively solicit feedback, manage and facilitate communication if needed.
• Build relationships: Successfully build friendship, trust and credibility with colleagues and team. Be seen as a key 'go to' person for advice. Create strong relationships in relevant fields outside of Planday to promote Planday as a strong player in AI, agents and customer problem solving.
• Growth mindset: Relentlessly look for opportunities to grow yourself and the organisation. Understand that competency is not fixed but is enhanced through dedication and hard work. Coach and provide feedback to others on development plans.
• Innovation and delivery: Constantly innovate and deliver technology in a team and solve customer problems by any means necessary.
• Coaching and mentorship: Teach groups of colleagues and contribute to Planday's shared knowledge base.
• Work collaboratively: Help individuals resolve difficult problems with empathy, exchange ideas, demonstrate conflict management skills.
• Self-learning: Maintains in-depth knowledge of advances and learnings in technologies relevant to Planday’s environment.

We are looking for someone with some of the following experience

• A strong foundation in Python, R, or similar AI and Machine Learning programming languages.
• Working with large language models (LLM), deep learning, statistical modeling and natural language processing.
• Experience in delivering, growing and maintaining real-world software applications.
• Experience building applications with great user experiences.
• Exposure to Microsoft .NET microservice environments and C#.
• Exposure to Google data services
• Highly proficient in clean architecture and implementation of distributed systems.
• Ability to rethink complex, monolithic systems into AI based systems.
• Ability and enjoyment of influencing, coaching and mentoring other AI and non AI developers. 

Please note that due to the holiday season, response times may be longer than usual. We appreciate your patience and understanding. We'll get back with an update on your application status latest in the second week in January.

Finally, our offices are not just workplaces (although they are pretty nice and well-located, we have to say!). Plandayers are open and welcoming and at Planday, everyone has the freedom and support to show their true self at work.

At Planday, we firmly believe that diversity and inclusion are the cornerstones of innovation and a vibrant workplace culture, and we highly value the strength that diverse backgrounds offer.

As an equal opportunity employer, we strive to create an equitable experience for all our candidates throughout the process. Please let us know if you need reasonable accommodation during the application or interview process.

All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to any personal characteristics.