
Utilities · 15k people
Principal AI Engineer
Posted 18 Oct
What’s this role about? The Principal AI Engineer is responsible for designing, building, and operating shared AI platform capabilities and setting engineering standards for the organization. This role focuses on operationalizing responsible AI, ensuring cost efficiency, and mentoring senior engineers to scale AI development across business units.
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Company
About RWE RWE is leading the way to a modern energy world. With its investment and growth strategy, RWE is contributing significantly to the success of the energy transition and the decarbonisation of the energy system. Around 20,000 employees work for the company in over 20 countries worldwide. RWE is one of the leading companies in the field of renewable energy. RWE is investing billions of euros in expanding its generation portfolio, in particular in offshore and onshore wind, solar energy and batteries. It is perfectly complemented by its global energy trading business. Thanks to its integrated portfolio of renewables, battery storage and flexible generation, as well as its broad project pipeline of possible new builds, RWE is well positioned to address the growing global demand for electricity, particularly driven by further electrification and artificial intelligence. RWE is decarbonising its business in line with the 1.5-degree reduction pathway and will phase out coal by 2030. RWE will be net zero by 2040. Fully in line with the company’s purpose - Our energy for a sustainable life.
RWE

Responsibilities
- Integrate and operate the shared AI platform capabilities squads and business units build on, including orchestration and agent frameworks, retrieval and knowledge services, evaluation tooling, model and prompt lifecycle management, observability, and guardrails. Ensure they are production-ready, supportable, and adopted across squads consistent with the enterprise target-state architecture and platform roadmap
- Solve the enterprise’s hardest AI engineering problems, including retrieval quality against a fragmented document and operational data estate, building useful models where labeled outcomes are scarce, enabling agents to operate safely in compliance-bound workflows, and resolving assets, sites, and other entities across systems with no common identifiers
- Define reference implementations for AI development across squads and drive their adoption, making the engineering standard visible, consistent, and teachable
- Operationalize responsible AI at the platform level through evaluation and guardrail infrastructure, explainability and citation, bias and drift detection, override and audit logging, prompt and model versioning, and the evidence trail required for compliance and audit
- Deliver AI platform cost efficiency through instrumentation and per-product economics, leading structural changes across routing, caching, context management, and model tiering that keep spend proportional to the value delivered, within the enterprise AI FinOps framework
- Multiply the output of the engineering organization by leading design reviews, coaching senior engineers, and evolving platform standards
Qualification
- Master’s or PhD degree in computer science, data science, STEM, or related field required
- Minimum 11 years of relevant professional experience in software or AI/ML engineering roles, including demonstrated experience building and operating shared platform capabilities used by multiple engineering teams and setting technical patterns that other engineers follow
- Deep expertise in enterprise-scale AI development, with the ability to set engineering standards that other engineers follow within an established platform architecture
- Production experience with a major cloud platform, Python, containerized deployment and CI/CD for AI services, and current LLM orchestration and agent frameworks
- Extensive experience integrating and operating the shared AI platform services described above in a production enterprise environment, with personal accountability for their reliability and supportability
- Depth in responsible AI engineering, with hands-on ownership of the evaluation, guardrail, and audit infrastructure described above
- Demonstrated ability to drive AI platform cost efficiency using the structural levers described above
- Proven ability to mentor and professionally develop junior AI engineers
- Experience with IT/OT environments, industrial data sources, or operational technology systems preferred
- Experience in the power, utilities, or clean energy sector, including knowledge of U.S. power markets, renewable project development, and clean energy technologies preferred
- This position is an office-based role with some travel and visits to other RWE Americas offices and field locations. The employee must be able to sit, walk, or stand for long durations of time
- Pay range: The annual base salary range for this position in Illinois is $178,000 - $240,000. The listed salary range represents our good faith estimate for this position and represents the range for new hire salaries across all U.S locations. Please note that the salary information is a general guideline only. RWE considers factors such as (but not limited to) scope and responsibilities of the position, candidate’s education & work experience, training & certifications, and key skills as well as market and business considerations at the time of the offer.
- Benefits offered: Medical, Dental, Vision, Life Insurance, Short-Term Disability, Long-Term Disability, 401(k) match, Flexible Spending Accounts, EAP, Education Assistance, Parental Leave, Paid time off, and Holidays. Eligible employees also participate in short-term incentives, in addition to salary.
- Apply with just a few clicks: ad code 93265Any questions? Contact HR: rwe_americas_recruiting@rwe.com
- We look forward to meeting you. Of course, you can find us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Xing, too.
- RWE Americas, a subsidiary of RWE, is a US-based energy company that is helping to meet the growing demand for energy across the United States. Backed by RWE’s 125-year global legacy of managing diverse power assets, RWE Americas operates approximately 13 GW of power projects across 27 states. With a talented workforce of 2,000 employees, RWE Americas develops, constructs and operates wind, solar and battery storage projects, along with natural gas-powered generation, that safely deliver affordable, reliable electricity to our customers. Committed to responsible development, RWE Americas invests in local and rural communities, creating jobs and partnering with stakeholders to support and strengthen the places where we live and work. Learn more about how RWE Americas is generating impact at americas.rwe.com.
- At RWE Americas, we foster a culture defined by our Essential Behaviors - Have Courage, Create Impact and Actively Collaborate. We encourage bold thinking and continuous learning, and we value ownership, resilience and inclusion in everything we do. When you join us, you become part of a team that supports your development, respects your contributions and celebrates shared success. This is a place where you can grow your career and make a meaningful difference.
Benefits
- Medical
- Dental
- Vision
- Life Insurance
- Short-term disability
- Long-term disability
- 401(k) match
- Flexible spending accounts
- EAP
- Education assistance
- Parental leave
- Paid time off
- Holidays
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