Principal AI Engineer

New American Funding is hiring a Principal AI Engineer to define and drive its enterprise AI and machine learning roadmap. The role architects, builds, and deploys production-grade AI solutions for loan origination, underwriting, and borrower experience, while advancing automation and ensuring regulatory compliance.

Responsibilities:

• Design, build, test, and deploy advanced AI applications, intelligent agents, and automated workflows that support business and technology objectives
• Lead hands-on development of generative AI solutions utilizing large language models (LLMs), agentic AI frameworks, and emerging AI technologies
• Develop scalable AI services, APIs, and integrations that connect AI capabilities with enterprise applications and data platforms
• Build solutions utilizing retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), semantic search, vector databases, and contextual data retrieval
• Develop and optimize prompts, tool integrations, orchestration logic, and agent workflows to improve accuracy, reliability, and performance
• Write high-quality, maintainable code while following established engineering standards and development practices
• Define technical architecture and engineering standards for enterprise AI solutions, ensuring scalability, reliability, security, and maintainability
• Evaluate AI models, frameworks, development tools, and emerging technologies to recommend solutions aligned with business needs
• Partner with Engineering and Technology leadership to establish reusable AI components, development patterns, and integration frameworks
• Make technical design decisions that balance innovation, performance, cost, and long-term platform sustainability
• Provide technical guidance for complex AI initiatives, identifying dependencies, architectural risks, and implementation considerations
• Design and implement AI agents capable of executing multi-step tasks, interacting with enterprise systems, and supporting intelligent workflow automation
• Develop agent orchestration and tool-calling capabilities that enable AI solutions to interact with business applications and data
• Identify opportunities to reduce manual processes, simplify workflows, and improve productivity through AI-driven automation
• Build AI solutions that support document intelligence, data extraction, decision support, and process optimization
• Evaluate agent performance and continuously refine solutions to improve reliability, accuracy, and business outcomes
• Partner with Product Managers, Engineering teams, Data teams, and business stakeholders to understand requirements and translate them into technical solutions
• Integrate AI capabilities into existing enterprise platforms, applications, and business workflows
• Collaborate with Engineering teams to ensure AI solutions align with enterprise architecture, development standards, and integration requirements
• Provide technical recommendations during product discovery, solution design, and development planning
• Support cross-functional initiatives that expand AI capabilities across NAF's technology ecosystem
• Serve as a senior technical subject matter expert for AI engineering and emerging AI technologies
• Mentor engineers and share best practices in AI development, architecture, coding, and implementation
• Lead technical design discussions, code reviews, and solution evaluations for complex AI initiatives
• Promote AI-enabled development practices and tools that improve engineering efficiency and delivery quality
• Stay current on advances in generative AI, agentic AI, machine learning, and AI engineering frameworks
• Identify and prototype innovative solutions that can be scaled into enterprise capabilities
• Own technical delivery of complex AI solutions from initial design and proof of concept through production implementation
• Partner with Product and business teams to define success measures and evaluate business impact
• Continuously improve AI development processes, reusable components, and deployment practices
• Troubleshoot complex technical challenges and provide hands-on support for production AI solutions
• Communicate technical progress, risks, recommendations, and outcomes to Engineering leadership and cross-functional stakeholders