Principal AI Engineer

The Role
As a Principal AI Engineer, you'll lead AI adoption across our client and their clients by designing and implementing AI-native software engineering practices that materially improve delivery speed, quality, and cost efficiency. This is a Staff/Principal individual contributor role at the intersection of engineering, AI strategy, and client delivery, with significant influence across internal teams, executive stakeholders, and client organizations.

This role is about AI applied to the software development process (code generation, PR review, testing, developer productivity, agent-based workflows). It is not about building AI features inside products, and not ML or data-science research.

What you'll do

Lead AI adoption internally

• Define and implement AI-assisted engineering practices across Transcenda delivery teams.

• Establish standards for AI code generation, PR review, testing, and documentation workflows.

• Evaluate and introduce tools, models, and agent-based workflows that improve developer productivity.

• Partner with delivery leadership to embed AI into real client projects.

Lead AI transformation for clients

• Lead AI adoption engagements for enterprise and high-growth clients.

• Assess current engineering workflows and identify AI-driven productivity opportunities.

• Design and implement AI-native development workflows in production environments.

• Advise CTOs and VPs of Engineering on AI adoption strategy, tooling, and operating-model changes.

• Translate technical improvements into measurable business outcomes (cycle time, cost, quality, throughput).

Build scalable offerings

• Shape Transcenda's AI engineering consulting offerings and playbooks.

• Develop repeatable frameworks for AI-assisted development and delivery transformation.

• Mentor senior engineers and client teams on the effective use of AI tools and agents.

• Contribute to thought leadership and market positioning around AI-native software development.

What you bring

• 10+ years of hands-on software engineering experience in modern cloud-native environments (AWS/GCP).

• A track record of leading or influencing engineering productivity or platform-level improvements across teams.

• Hands-on experience using LLMs or AI-assisted development tools in production workflows, including real trade-offs around reliability, cost, and model behavior.

• Strong architectural understanding of CI/CD, code review systems, and testing strategy.

• Experience in enterprise or regulated environments (security, compliance, risk) is strongly preferred.

• Proven ability to influence technical direction without direct authority and to advise senior engineering and executive stakeholders.

• Ability to translate technical change into measurable business outcomes and communicate them clearly to both engineers and executives.

• Advanced English.

What success looks like

• Measurable improvement in engineering velocity and delivery efficiency across teams.

• Successful client AI adoption engagements with clear ROI.

• Repeatable AI engineering playbooks used across multiple clients.

• Strong executive trust as a strategic AI advisor.

• AI-native practices embedded into our client's delivery model.

Engagement & logistics

• 100% remote.

• Location: Brazil

• B2B contract, full-time (40h/week). Flexible hours with availability for team and client collaboration. Because this is a B2B engagement, you're responsible for your own benefits, and we keep a flexible time-off policy of up to 40 days per year.