Principal AI Engineer (EdTech scale-up)

About the ClientThe client is a high-growth global scale-up in AI and data skills education, trusted by over 17 million learners and 80% of Fortune 1000 companies. They are tackling one of education’s biggest challenges - Bloom’s 2 Sigma Problem - by building a real-time, adaptive AI Tutor designed to deliver personalized 1-on-1 instruction at global scale.The Role (100% Hands-On Individual Contributor) This is a pure IC builder role with zero management responsibilities. Designed for Staff or Principal level engineers who build end-to-end, this position owns the core agentic AI systems from architecture to execution - including prompt design, multi-agent workflows, automated evaluation frameworks, content ingestion pipelines, and production cloud deployment. Working directly alongside founding leaders, this engineer will simplify complex systems and ship high-impact, user-facing AI products at rapid velocity.Key ResponsibilitiesSystem Architecture & Development: Design, code, and deploy production-grade LLM architectures, agentic workflows, tool-calling interfaces, and content ingestion engines.Evaluation & Reliability: Build robust automated evaluation frameworks (LLM-as-a-judge, tracing, safety guardrails) to quantify learning impact and system accuracy.End-to-End Execution: Drive ambiguous zero-to-one product initiatives autonomously, delivering scalable Python code straight to production.Technical Standards: Raise the engineering bar through hands-on technical excellence, architectural discipline, and code reviews.Mandatory QualificationsEducational Technology Experience): Direct experience building EdTech products, adaptive learning tools, or digital pedagogy systems. A proven focus on learning outcomes, not just model benchmarks.Start-Up / Scale-Up Track Record: Demonstrated success in fast-paced start-up or scale-up environments. Comfortable moving fast, solving ambiguous problems, and executing without guidance.100% Hands-On IC Mindset: Daily active code contributor who owns the full software delivery lifecycle end-to-end.Production AI/ML Engineering: 5+ years shipping production AI systems, with deep hands-on expertise in LLMs, multi-agent systems, and RAG architectures.Core Software Stack: Advanced Python, microservices, cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP), Docker/Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines.Location, Working Hours & TravelLocation: Remote-friendly from Portugal.Timezone Overlap: Working hours must comfortably align with Gulf Standard Time (GST / UTC+4).Travel: Ability to travel to Dubai quarterly.