Principal Platform Engineer

Job DescriptionInsight Global is seeking a Principal Platform Engineer for a global retailer to take technical ownership of and scale an enterprise AI platform within GCP.This is a senior individual contributor role with no direct reports, though this person will provide technical leadership and mentorship to engineering teams. The ideal candidate has personally built and operated enterprise AI/ML platforms in production, specifically within GCP and Vertex AI, and can own critical platform architecture decisions.

Responsibilities

Own and evolve the enterprise AI platform architecture within GCPBuild and scale Vertex AI MLOps capabilities, including training pipelines, Model Registry, evaluation/approval workflows, and model servingEstablish MLOps/LLMOps standards across development, deployment, monitoring, and lifecycle managementBuild GenAI platform capabilities including RAG, grounding, prompt management, guardrails, evaluations, agents, and MCP integrationDevelop reusable Terraform modules, Infrastructure-as-Code, policy-as-code, and CI/CD pipelinesCreate self-service “golden path” templates for engineering teamsImplement AI/ML observability and FinOps practices, including tracing, drift detection, latency, token usage, and cost monitoringEstablish platform standards around security, governance, scalability, and responsible AIRemain hands-on with Python while owning key architecture decisionsProvide technical leadership and mentorship across engineering, data, architecture, security, and product teamsRequired Skills & Experience10+ years of experience across platform engineering, cloud infrastructure, software engineering, or enterprise architectureProven experience building and operating enterprise AI/ML platforms in productionDeep hands-on expertise with GCP and Vertex AIStrong experience with MLOps and LLMOps architectureVertex AI experience across training pipelines, Model Registry, evaluation/approval, and model servingGenAI experience with RAG, grounding, guardrails, evaluations, agents, and/or MCPStrong Terraform, Infrastructure-as-Code, policy-as-code, and CI/CD experienceExperience building reusable/self-service platform capabilities for other engineering teamsExperience with AI/ML observability and FinOpsAdvanced Python software engineering skillsAbility to independently own major platform architecture decisionsPay Transparency:Expected salary starting at $200,000 Vacancy Disclosure:This role is for a new vacant opening within a growth project. Please note, artificial intelligence tools are used to assist in screening and assessing applicants for this position.