Principal Software Engineer - IT

Are you an experienced Principal Software Engineer - IT with a desire to excel? If so, then Talent Software Services may have the job for you! Our client is seeking an experienced Principal Software Engineer - IT to work at their company in Round Rock, TX.

Job Title: Principal Software Engineer(AI Software Engineer / AI Agent Engineer)

Location: Round Rock, TX (Onsite)

Duration:12 Month on W2 Contract

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and deploy AI-powered capabilities across the SDLC, including:
• Spec Driven Development workflows that support the translation of well-formed specifications into secure, verifiable implementations
• Assurance of AI-generated code - guardrails, policy enforcement, and verification for code produced by AI assistants and agents
• SDLC skills and agent tooling - developer-assist skills as well as verification skills that perform automated security checks (design review, dependency and supply-chain analysis, static/dynamic analysis orchestration, release audit support)
• Integrate solutions with enterprise systems - source control, CI/CD, ticketing, security scanning, identity, and internal platforms - through APIs, webhooks, and protocols such as MCP (Model Context Protocol)
• Partner with engineering, security, product, and leadership stakeholders to define requirements, evaluate trade-offs, and support solution adoption
• Apply sound architecture and systems design practices: well-defined service boundaries, appropriate data models, secure defaults, observability, and extensibility

Required Skills and Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience developing and deploying AI-based solutions in production environments, with measurable business or operational impact
• Strong programming proficiency (e.g., Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, Go, or similar) and adherence to software engineering best practices, including testing, code quality, and maintainability
• Hands-on experience with modern AI/LLM development, including:
• Context engineering - designing what informs the model's context window, including agentic retrieval and search, memory architectures, grounding in enterprise data, and structured outputs
• Agentic system design - agent loop engineering, multi-agent and sub-agent orchestration, and tool/function calling
• Context window management and token budgeting, including cost and latency optimization for production workloads
• Evaluation of AI system quality, reliability, and safety
• Solid understanding of software architecture and systems design, including API design, event-driven
• patterns, and data modeling for scalability and extensibility
• Experience developing and/or deploying applications with large-scale impact (broad user base, high transaction volume, or organization-wide adoption)
• Experience integrating with multiple systems and platforms (REST/GraphQL APIs, CI/CD pipelines, cloud services, enterprise tooling)
• Demonstrated ability to work independently across the full delivery lifecycle - requirements analysis, solution design, implementation, deployment, and stakeholder engagement - with accountability for results
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to convey technical concepts to both
• engineering and business audiences
• Working knowledge of secure development practices and experience designing solutions that meet enterprise security and compliance requirements

Preferred Skills and Qualifications

• Experience applying AI within a security domain - application security, DevSecOps, code analysis, threat modeling, firmware security or software supply-chain security
• Familiarity with secure-by-design / secure-by-default principles and relevant frameworks (e.g., OWASP, including the OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications; NIST SSDF)
• Experience with MCP (Model Context Protocol), building agent skills and tools, or extending AI coding assistants (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Devin)
• Experience with AI evaluation frameworks, guardrails, prompt/response caching strategies, and LLMOps in production
• Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science or a related field, or equivalent practical