Principal Engineer, AI Engineering

A Career at HARMAN Automotive

We’re a global, multi-disciplinary team that’s putting the innovative power of technology to work and transforming tomorrow. At HARMAN Automotive, we give you the keys to fast-track your career.

• Engineer audio systems and integrated technology platforms that augment the driving experience
• Combine ingenuity, in-depth research, and a spirit of collaboration with design and engineering excellence
• Advance in-vehicle infotainment, safety, efficiency, and enjoyment

About the Role

We are looking for a hands-on AI Development Lead to lead the setup and development of AI applications and guide a team in building AI agents for real business use cases.

The role requires strong practical knowledge of AI application development, particularly prompt engineering, context management, long-term memory, and business agent implementation. You will translate business needs into working AI capabilities, guide technical implementation, and help the team deliver reliable, useful applications.

Working knowledge of backend development, using technologies such as Python or Java, is required to integrate AI capabilities with backend services. AI system architecture experience is a plus, but it is not mandatory. The primary focus is applied AI development and team technical leadership rather than model research or training foundation models.

What You Will Do

AI Application Development

• Lead the development of AI applications from initial use-case exploration and prototyping through implementation, testing, and delivery.
• Translate business use cases into practical AI workflows and clearly defined agent responsibilities.
• Guide the team in selecting and integrating suitable LLMs, AI services, frameworks, and development tools.
• Develop and refine prompts, instructions, and structured outputs to support application requirements.
• Establish evaluation methods to assess output quality, business usefulness, and reliability.
• Investigate AI application issues and improve behavior through testing and iterative development.

Business Agent Development

• Guide the team in building agents that can use business data, invoke tools or APIs, and complete defined business tasks.
• Define agent inputs, outputs, tool permissions, and execution boundaries.
• Implement appropriate validation, error handling, fallback behavior, and human review where needed.
• Integrate agents with existing business systems and backend services.
• Keep agent behavior aligned with agreed business requirements and acceptance criteria.

Context and Long-Term Memory

• Define how applications collect, retrieve, organize, and provide context to models and agents.
• Guide the implementation of long-term memory (LTM) for persistent business or user information where appropriate.
• Distinguish between prompt instructions, request context, short-lived session state, and long-term memory.
• Manage how context and memory relate to one another and contribute to agent decisions and responses.
• Apply suitable retrieval and selection techniques to provide relevant information within model input limits.
• Consider data quality, freshness, privacy, and access permissions when using context and memory.

Team Technical Leadership

• Break down AI development requirements into clear tasks and provide implementation guidance.
• Establish practical guidelines for prompt management, context handling, memory usage, agent development, and evaluation.
• Review code, prompts, agent workflows, and test results to maintain implementation quality.
• Mentor developers and help them with troubleshoot model behavior, integration issues, and agent execution problems.
• Provide hands-on implementation for critical AI components and prototypes.
• Identify technical risks and communicate trade-offs, limitations, and progress to stakeholders.

Backend Integration and Collaboration

• Develop or contribute to backend services and APIs using Python, Java, or suitable backend technology.
• Work with backend engineers to integrate AI capabilities with service APIs, databases, and external systems.
• Apply appropriate authentication, authorization, logging, testing, and error handling to AI service integrations.
• Collaborate with product, business, QA, and operations teams to validate use cases and deliver working applications.

What You Need to Be Successful

• At least 10 years of professional software development experience, including hands-on application delivery and technical leadership.
• Strong practical experience developing LLM-based applications and integrating AI capabilities into software products.
• Strong knowledge of prompt engineering, including instruction design, structured outputs, and iterative prompt evaluation.
• Solid understanding of context management, long-term memory, and their roles in AI application and agent behavior.
• Experience building AI agents for business use cases, including tool or API integration and multi-step task execution.
• Ability to evaluate AI application quality, diagnose unreliable behavior, and improve solutions through testing and iteration.
• Experience guiding developers, reviewing implementations, and helping a team deliver AI functionality.
• Working knowledge of backend development in Python or Java, including APIs, service integration, and data access.
• Understanding of practical AI applications concerns such as hallucinations, latency, token usage, cost, privacy, and safety.
• Ability to turn business requirements into implementable AI features and explain technical choices clearly.

Bonus Points if You Have

• Experience with AI system architecture, including component boundaries and integration patterns for model access, agents, context, and memory.
• Familiarity with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), embeddings, vector search, or memory retrieval techniques.
• Experience delivering and operating AI applications in production.
• Experience with AI evaluation tooling, agent observability, or model-provider integration.
• Familiarity with cloud deployment, containers, and CI/CD for AI-enabled services.

What We Offer

• Flexible work environment, allowing for full-time remote work one day per week for positions that can be performed outside a HARMAN or customer location.
• Access to employee discounts on world-class Harman (JBL, HARMAN Kardon, AKG, etc.)
• Extensive training opportunities through our own HARMAN University
• Competitive wellness benefits
• Access to HARMAN Campus Fitness Center and Cafeteria
• “Be Brilliant” employee recognition and rewards program
• An inclusive and diverse work environment that fosters and encourages professional and personal development