Location
London

Hours
Full Time

Salary
Negotiable

About the Role
As a Principal Software Engineer - AI at Moody's, you will lead the strategy, delivery, and evolution of mission-critical AI platforms and intelligent applications within the Digital Content and Innovation organization. You will define and execute long-term technical strategies, owning the multi-year architecture and technology roadmap for AI platforms and applications. This role involves leading multiple engineering teams, including engineering managers, technical leads, and staff-level engineers, with accountability for delivery outcomes across a diverse portfolio. You will drive architectural decisions and organizational alignment for AI-powered solutions leveraging large language models, retrieval augmented generation, orchestration frameworks, and agentic workflows. You will establish engineering excellence through architecture and code reviews, automated testing, observability, security standards, operational excellence, and machine learning operations practices. Additionally, you will manage budget planning and cost management, including headcount, cloud infrastructure, tooling investments, and vendor relationships. Partnering with product, business, risk, legal, compliance, and audit stakeholders, you will maximize customer value and implement responsible AI governance practices. You will also attract, develop, and retain engineering talent through mentoring, succession planning, and performance coaching, cultivating future engineering leaders. Finally, you will define and report on key metrics demonstrating platform adoption, delivery performance, reliability, cost efficiency, and measurable business impact.

Our Digital Content and Innovation team builds and deploys intelligent, AI-powered solutions that drive innovation across Moody's products and platforms. The team accelerates next-generation analytical capabilities, enables smarter client experiences, and advances Moody's leadership in applied artificial intelligence. As Principal Engineer, you will define the technical vision, guide strategic investments, build high-performing teams, and help transform applied AI into scalable, production-ready capabilities that deliver measurable value responsibly and at scale.

Experience
12+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years leading engineering teams and delivering complex, large-scale, multi-team initiatives with measurable business impact. Experience leading multiple teams or groups of teams, managing engineering managers, technical leads, and staff-level engineers with accountability for delivery outcomes across a portfolio. Strong technical depth in TypeScript, Python, C#, or similar technologies, with the ability to engage credibly in architecture and code reviews, challenge design decisions, and assess technical risk. Deep expertise in enterprise AI applications built on large language models, including agents, retrieval augmented generation, orchestration frameworks, model optimization, and evaluation frameworks. Hands-on experience building AI/ML applications (RAG, agent frameworks, MCPs, skills, harnesses) and taking them to production or platforming (LLM or MCP gateway, agentic runtime, auth, data retrieval, eval tooling). Experience running AI systems in production at scale, including observability, cost and capacity planning, regression detection, and incident response for AI-powered applications. Experience operating production distributed systems on AWS/Azure, with a strong grasp of reliability, observability, and incident response at scale. Deep knowledge of cloud-native technologies, serverless applications, event-driven architectures, data and inference pipelines, relational, NoSQL, and vector databases, and modern software architecture patterns. Proven track record of owning multi-year technical strategy and architectural roadmaps, guiding teams from AI prototype through production deployment, and influencing organizational change. Deep expertise in artificial intelligence, with a track record of implementing advanced AI solutions to drive strategic transformation and operational efficiency. Strong experience using AI tools to lead innovation initiatives. Demonstrated leadership in managing AI-related risks, ensuring ethical governance, and fostering a culture of responsible AI adoption across the organization.

About you
You are a visionary and strategic leader passionate about AI and software engineering excellence. You thrive in complex, fast-paced environments and excel at driving innovation and organizational change. You have strong interpersonal skills to collaborate effectively with cross-functional stakeholders including product, business, risk, legal, compliance, and audit teams. You are committed to responsible AI governance and ethical AI adoption. You enjoy mentoring and developing engineering talent and fostering a culture of continuous improvement and high performance.

Qualifications
Bachelor's or master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.