Principal Engineer, AI

Who We Are

Invitation Homes set out to solve a real problem: home leasing options were limited and the experience for renters was inconsistent. Today, as the nation’s largest single-family home rental company, our engineering teams build the technology at the center of that solution: personalized resident experiences, service tools, and the operational systems that residents and associates depend on every day. When we ship, people feel it.

We’ve built an engineering culture that takes that responsibility seriously: collaborative teams, high standards, and a genuine investment in the people around you. Great software is built by engineers who are supported, growing, and proud of what they ship. This role maps to what many organizations call a Principal Engineer, where technical mastery and organizational influence converge to shape how engineering works at scale. You are a trusted partner to engineering leadership: setting strategic direction, maintaining a comprehensive view of the technical landscape, and engaging where the organization needs you most. You remain technically active (hands-on work anchors your credibility), but your primary lever is strategic influence, not individual execution.

Our Principal AI Engineer is a new role created to own the architecture and execution behind our organization’s AI journey: not just accelerate individual teams, but operationalize the direction, standards, and guardrails the whole department builds AI on. Working within the AI strategy and governance framework set at the Tech Fellow and executive level, you’ll evaluate and recommend agentic frameworks and platform tooling, own the architecture behind our shared AI platform, and enforce the build-vs-buy and risk decisions that keep individual teams from having to make them alone. This role has direct accountability for AI systems operating safely, reliably, and cost-effectively at the scale of a 100,000+ home portfolio.

From here, you’ll have a clear path to Sr. Principal Engineer, where you’ll take on the organization’s most consequential technical and cultural challenges.

What You’ll Do

Technical Leadership

• Stay technically active: contribute to architectural decisions, engage with critical AI designs, and write code where it matters most; your credibility is grounded in doing the work.
• Take responsibility for the hardest AI architectural decisions and complex cross-functional challenges: the ones without clear right answers, including agentic framework adoption and platform-level build-vs-buy calls, within the AI investment priorities set at the executive level.
• Maintain broad visibility across AI initiatives and the platform underneath them; identify high-risk scenarios early (safety, cost overrun, model drift, vendor lock-in) and intervene proactively before they become critical.
• Evaluate AI/LLM tooling, agentic frameworks, and platform integrations, and bring recommendations forward to inform enterprise-level technology and vendor decisions.
• Enforce and operationalize the AI architectural governance framework: ensure decisions are recorded, discoverable, and aligned with the responsible AI standards and enterprise strategy set by executive technical leadership.
• Own the shared AI platform (eval frameworks, MCP and LLM gateways, RAG/retrieval infrastructure) as durable, cross-team infrastructure rather than a single-team asset.
• Champion an engineering culture where teams build and evolve AI capabilities autonomously; identify gaps in AI governance, security posture, and architectural alignment, and address them with durable improvements that span teams.
• Own enterprise-level observability and cost governance for AI systems in production: performance, safety, and spend across every LLM-driven feature, not just one.

Knowledge & Standards

• Demonstrate mastery across AI/ML domains, model architectures, and agentic patterns, alongside broader software architecture.
• Shape the strategic direction of the AI technical stack, model providers, and engineering approach: balancing pragmatism today with long-term value.
• Track the frontier model landscape and AI community developments; translate what’s relevant into internal standards and recommendations that keep the organization current and competitive.
• Understand critical non-functional requirements for AI systems specifically (latency, hallucination risk, cost-per-inference, safety, and maintainability) and use them to guide teams toward resilient, responsible systems.
• Maintain a comprehensive, high-level understanding of how AI capabilities fit into the broader technical landscape; serve as the go-to expert on how AI systems interact with core platforms, even across domains you don’t own directly.

Communication & Collaboration

• Distill complex AI topics into clear, actionable communication that helps teams anticipate change and adapt with confidence, and that informs the AI strategy and risk narrative executive leadership relies on.
• Facilitate key forums (architecture guilds, executive reviews, cross-team design sessions) with clarity, confidence, and empathy, supporting senior leadership’s AI strategy conversations with technical detail and risk analysis.
• Build and maintain an evergreen knowledge base of AI architectural patterns and reference implementations that promotes long-term technical clarity across the organization.
• Establish shared language and frameworks (including a common vocabulary for evals, agentic patterns, and AI risk) that help teams consistently reason about and discuss AI problems.
• Build strong relationships with stakeholders across departments (including Legal, Security, and Data) to bridge the gap between AI engineering and the broader business and its governance obligations.

Leadership & Culture

• Act as a cultural pillar and steward of engineering values: model humility, rigor, curiosity, and high standards in everything you do.
• Raise the bar for AI engineering across the organization through modeling, targeted mentorship, and a visible standard of technical excellence.
• Take ownership of decisions on hard AI tradeoffs, subjective designs, and complex cross-functional challenges: make the call, ensure the organization aligns, and model how to move forward decisively.
• Mentor Staff AI Engineers and senior engineers, investing deliberately in the depth, judgment, and reach of those who will carry the organization’s AI technical future.
• Maintain a bias to action at the organizational level: identify AI-related risks early, intervene proactively, and drive resolution before issues become critical.

What You Bring

• 10+ years of professional software development experience, with a demonstrated track record of driving strategic technical direction across an engineering organization.
• 2+ years developing and deploying production-grade AI systems at scale, including LLM-dependent applications, RAG systems, agents, and eval infrastructure.
• Mastery across multiple technical domains, with deep expertise in software architecture, distributed systems, and AI/LLM system design at scale.
• A track record of operationalizing AI governance, model evaluation standards, and architectural practices that scale across multiple teams, including responsible AI and safety considerations.
• Experience evaluating and recommending AI infrastructure choices (agentic frameworks, eval platforms, tooling) with real business and cost tradeoffs, and executing within enterprise-level vendor and platform decisions.
• Experience partnering with senior engineering, security/legal, and business stakeholders to execute AI technology direction in alignment with organizational strategy.
• A demonstrated ability to communicate across all levels (from technical proposals to executive forums to cross-departmental briefings) with the clarity needed to inform and support organizational AI direction.
• A track record of mentoring senior and staff-level engineers and raising the standard of technical judgment across the organization.
• A deep commitment to engineering excellence: you define what great looks like for AI systems and work actively to make it the shared standard.
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms, CI/CD practices, and modern iterative software delivery.
• A degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms, CI/CD practices, and modern iterative software delivery.
• A degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

Our Stack

Our engineering teams work with TypeScript, Node.js, React, PostgreSQL, and AWS, including Lambda, DynamoDB, and RDS. We practice CI/CD, favor infrastructure as code, and build on REST APIs and event-driven architectures. Salesforce is a significant part of our technology landscape: some teams build directly on the platform, while others integrate with Salesforce-managed APIs. Our AI engineering work uses AWS Bedrock and LangGraph for orchestration, Snowflake for data, and Anthropic and OpenAI as model providers. Experience with these is a strong plus, though we care more about depth of thinking, adaptability, and the drive to keep learning than familiarity with any specific tool.

Physical and Mental Demands

This position will spend long hours sitting and using office equipment and computers. The position may also entail light lifting of supplies and materials occasionally, up to and including 20 pounds in addition to reaching, stooping, standing, and walking. This position requires the ability to talk, hear, compare, compute, compile, copy, analyze, coordinate, synthesize, negotiate and communicate. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential job functions.

Work Environment

Standard office working environment that may be busy and noisy at times.

Why Invitation Homes

We stand for flexibility, opportunity, and a home that people can make their own. It’s as true for our associates as it is for our residents. Just like we help our residents live freer, we liberate our associates’ careers, too.  Our associates know that at Invitation Homes goals matter, potential is unlocked, and careers thrive. Invitation Homes isn’t just a work place it is a possibility place. Invitation Homes offers the below to each new associate:

• Competitive pay and an annual bonus program for all associates

• Generous paid time off plans including vacation accrual, sick time, volunteer time, and standard and floating holidays

• 401k with matching company contributions

• Awesome work environment with casual dress

• Team events and gatherings

• Employee resource groups: Together with Women, Asian Alliance, Black Collective, Juntos, Gen Next, and Open Invitation.

Invitation Homes truly is where possibility lives, pour a new foundation here!

Salary RangeThe salary range for this position is: $150,000.00 - $260,000.00, plus individuals may be eligible for an annual discretionary bonus. Actual compensation within the range will be dependent upon the individual's skills, experience, qualifications, location, and applicable employment laws.

Compensation and Benefits

To attract and retain top talent, we're pleased to offer competitive compensation and benefits, including:

• Annual bonus program

• Health, dental, vision, and life insurance

• Long-term and short-term disability insurance

• Generous paid time off plans include vacation accrual, sick time, standard holidays and floating holidays

• 401(k) with company matching contributions

• Awesome work environment with casual dress

• Team events and gatherings (Pre- and Post-Covid)

Invitation Homes is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive and innovative environment with the best associates. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, Veteran status or any other factor protected by applicable federal, state or local law. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please contact us at [email protected].

To all recruitment agencies: Invitation Homes does not accept agency resumes.  Please do not forward resumes to Invitation Homes employees.  Invitation Homes is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes. 

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