Company Overview
Robots & Pencils is an applied AI engineering firm building the next frontier of business architecture. We design and ship AI co-workers that integrate into enterprise operations and deliver measurable results for our clients. We're all in on AWS, combining deep UX capability with senior engineering talent to get AI into production fast and keep it there. We’ve earned the trust of leaders across Consumer Products and Retail, Education, Energy, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Manufacturing and more, and earned a reputation as the nimble alternative to traditional global systems integrators. Founded in 2009, with delivery centers in Canada, the United States, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, we are smaller, faster, and more senior by design. Our teams average 15+ years of experience. We move fast, sweat the details, and build things that actually ship.
Position Overview
We’re looking for a Principal AI Engineer to define and drive the technical direction of our AI/ML systems. This role is ideal for a deeply experienced engineer who leads from the front — shaping architecture at the system level, solving the hardest problems, and raising the bar for how AI gets built and operated across the organization.
In this role, you will work on a cross-functional team, setting AI architecture standards, leading complex system design and implementation challenges, and solving integration problems that require both deep expertise and broad systems thinking. You’ll partner closely with leadership to define the AI roadmap and make high-stakes technical decisions that shape how our AI work scales across clients and over time.
Why This Role Matters
At Robots & Pencils, we design AI systems for a human world. Our name says it all. Robots and pencils means engineering paired with creativity, because every agent we ship has to work for real people in real workflows. That balance is baked into how we operate.
Every role here contributes directly to that mission. Here, you shape how AI systems integrate into enterprise operations, how teams move at real velocity, and how products create measurable impact for clients and the people they serve. We ship production-ready AI in 30 to 45 days. That pace demands people who take ownership, lead with craft, and care deeply about what they put their name on.
What You’ll Do
Craft & Delivery
Define AI architecture and technical strategy, and lead implementation across the full lifecycle from design through production
Build scalable ML platforms, pipelines, and workflow orchestration that support model development and event-driven, asynchronous operations at scale
Architect and build LLM-powered systems, including prompt engineering, function/tool calling, multi-agent orchestration, RAG patterns, vector databases, embeddings, and streaming responses
Design and develop APIs and backend services that integrate AI capabilities with enterprise systems and third-party platforms
Lead model development, optimization, and the path from research to production, ensuring promising approaches translate into reliable, production-ready systems
Ensure AI reliability, security, and scalability across deployed systems, including logging, monitoring, and debugging in production environments
Bring an AI-forward mindset to your daily work, using tools like Claude, Cursor, and other modern AI assistants to ship higher-quality work at pace
Collaboration & Communication
Co-define the AI roadmap with leadership, operating as a peer in strategic technical conversations
Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to engineering and non-engineering stakeholders alike, translating depth into decisions others can act on
Engage with product, engineering, and data teams to align AI work with broader business priorities
Leadership & Influence
Define and champion AI engineering standards that shape how the organization builds and operates AI systems
Mentor across the organization, shaping engine
