Principal AI Architect / Staff Engineer
Principal AI Architect / Staff Engineer Dublin | Hybrid Cpl Recruitment are partnering with a leading international organisation to appoint an experienced Principal AI Architect / Staff Engineer to join a growing AI engineering function in Dublin.
This is a hands on role for an experienced engineer who enjoys shaping technical strategy while remaining hands-on with architecture and software delivery.
You'll play a key role in defining the technical direction of a modern AI platform, enabling engineering teams to build scalable, production-grade AI products that deliver real business value.
Working across engineering, product, and business teams, you'll influence architecture, establish engineering standards, mentor senior engineers, and help build the next generation of AI-powered applications using modern cloud and generative AI technologies.
Responsibilities Define the architecture and technical roadmap for AI-powered platforms and applications.
Design scalable, secure, and resilient cloud-native solutions using modern engineering principles.
Lead the adoption of AI engineering best practices, including LLMs, AI agents, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and intelligent workflow orchestration.
Drive architectural decisions across multiple engineering initiatives while promoting consistency and technical excellence.
Build reusable platform services, developer tooling, and shared capabilities that accelerate product delivery.
Partner with engineering and product leadership to shape long-term technology strategy and platform evolution.
Mentor senior engineers through architecture reviews, technical guidance, and engineering best practices.
Champion modern software engineering practices, including CI/CD, automated testing, observability, security, and platform reliability.
Evaluate emerging technologies and identify opportunities to introduce new capabilities that create measurable business value.
Collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders to translate complex business challenges into scalable technical solutions.
Requirements
8+ years' commercial software engineering experience, including significant time operating as a Principal Engineer, Staff Engineer, Lead Architect, or similar senior technical leadership role.
Proven experience designing and delivering large-scale cloud-native platforms and distributed systems.
Strong software architecture expertise across backend services, APIs, cloud infrastructure, and modern application design.
Extensive hands-on development experience, with Python strongly preferred.
Strong experience with Google Cloud, or equivalent expertise across AWS or Azure.
Commercial experience delivering production-grade generative AI solutions using technologies such as LLMs, AI agents, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), vector databases, prompt engineering, and AI orchestration frameworks.
Experience designing reusable AI platforms and shared engineering capabilities rather than standalone proofs of concept.
Strong understanding of software quality, security, scalability, CI/CD, observability, and engineering governance.
Experience mentoring senior engineers and influencing technical direction across multiple teams.
Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills with the ability to influence both technical and non-technical audiences.
Comfortable operating within fast-paced, high-growth engineering environments.
Desirable Experience with Google Agent Platform (Vertex AI), Gemini APIs, or similar AI ecosystems.
Experience building internal developer platforms, engineering tooling, or AI infrastructure.
Knowledge of MLOps, AI governance, and production AI lifecycle management.
Experience within media, entertainment, digital content, or other large-scale consumer technology environments.
Contributions to open-source projects or recognised technical leadership within engineering communities.
Next Steps If you're interested in learning more about this opportunity, please send your CV to james.monks@cpl.com for a confidential discussion. #LI-JM2