Principal Software Engineer - AI Tooling & Cloud

Epic Games powers online services for over half a billion players worldwide while operating one of the largest cloud computing environments in the world.

The Online Infrastructure AI Engineering team is seeking a Tech Lead / Principal Engineer to provide technical leadership, architectural vision, and strategic direction for AI-powered platforms, tools, and developer services across Epic. Sitting at the intersection of AI innovation and scale engineering, you will lead the zero-to-one design and build-out of unified AI code review systems, cloud agent hosting frameworks, centralized AI knowledge bases, and developer velocity tools utilized daily by thousands of engineers across Unreal Engine, Fortnite, and internal core systems.

Key Responsibilities

• Technical Leadership & Vision: Provide architectural strategy and technical leadership for production-grade AI developer tools serving thousands of software engineers across major codebases.
• Multi-Modal Platform Architecture: Drive architectural design for developer-facing tools across CLI interfaces, desktop applications, web platforms, build pipeline integrations, microservices, and APIs.
• AI Agent Frameworks & Patterns: Pioneer patterns for modern AI agent architectures (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot integrations), establishing company-wide standards for AI-assisted software development.
• Security & Governance Protocols: Design and enforce security, identity, and compliance protocols for AI platforms, including secret management, workload identity, and runtime isolation policies.
• Kubernetes & Microservices Engineering: Hands-on architect and build resilient, distributed microservices and containerized environments operating at massive cloud scale.
• Mentorship & Metrics: Define success metrics for developer productivity tools, conduct high-level architectural reviews, and mentor software engineers across the infrastructure organization.

Requirements

Technical Qualifications & Background

• B.S. in Computer Science (or equivalent practical experience) with 10+ years of experience building and shipping production software systems.
• Proven track record of zero-to-one platform ownership—leading technical architecture, strategy, and hands-on execution of new software platforms from inception to scale.
• Expert-level engineering background with REST APIs, microservices, and distributed systems.
• Extensive hands-on experience orchestrating and operating scalable containerized services on Kubernetes (managing container lifecycles, runtime security, and cloud configurations).
• High level of proficiency and hands-on interest in building and extending AI-assisted development tools (e.g., LLM APIs, AI agents, Copilot, Cursor).

Strategic Leadership & Soft Skills

• Demonstrated capability to translate ambiguous, company-wide operational challenges into concrete technical roadmaps.
• Strong cross-functional alignment skills with a track record of driving technical excellence and mentoring senior engineers.

Benefits & Total Rewards

• 100% Employer-Paid Premiums: Complete coverage for medical, dental, vision HRA, short/long-term disability, and life insurance for employees and dependents.
• Retirement & Financial: 401(k) plan with competitive company matching.
• Mental Health & Time Off: Free therapy and coaching via Modern Health, unlimited PTO and sick time, company-wide paid seasonal breaks, and a paid sabbatical after 7 years of service.