Principal Applied AI Engineer

Here at Appian, our values of Intensity and Excellence define who we are. We set high standards and live up to them, ensuring that everything we do is done with care and quality. We approach every challenge with ambition and commitment, holding ourselves and each other accountable to achieve the best results. When you join Appian, you’ll be part of a passionate team dedicated to accomplishing hard things, together. Principal Applied AI Engineer Lead the engineering of software that matters — driving AI automation for the world's largest enterprises. This role is based at our ​h​eadquarters in ​McLean, Virginia. Appian was built on a culture of in-person collaboration, which we believe is a key driver of our mission to be the best. Employees hired for this position are expected to be in the office 5 days a week to foster that culture and ensure we continue to thrive through shared ideas and teamwork. We believe being in the office provides more opportunities to come together and celebrate working with the exceptional people across Appian. ABOUT THE TEAM Appian Engineering spans the full depth of our platform: from the foundational layers that power enterprise scale, to the AI capabilities redefining what automation can do. We operate in a highly collaborative, fast-paced environment focused on technical precision, continuous learning, and high code quality. By joining our team, you will solve real-world problems that directly shape how Appian delivers our AI-Powered Process Automation platform to enterprises around the world. THE OPPORTUNITY As a Principal Applied AI Engineer, you will serve as the technical linchpin for applied AI on the team, bringing deep hands-on expertise in designing and operating production LLM systems and a track record of influencing engineering direction beyond your immediate scope. Equipped with cutting-edge AI tooling, you will drive the design and delivery of high-complexity AI systems — spanning code generation, agents, retrieval, structured generation, tool use, model routing, evaluation, and observability — set the technical bar for the team, and lead other engineers towards solutions of real complexity to ensure flawless Enterprise-Grade Orchestration. WHAT YOU'LL DO • Develop Clean Software: Architect, build, and optimize high-performance production LLM systems while maintaining a strong personal technical presence on the team. • Lead Platform Modernization: Spearhead strategic technological changes and champion code refactoring efforts to keep the core Appian codebase — and the AI systems built on it — cutting-edge, modern, and performant. • Engineer with AI: Use AI coding tools fluently as a force multiplier: generating, reviewing, and critically evaluating AI-assisted code to ship faster without compromising quality or correctness. • Lead Architecture & Delivery: Drive technical story breakdowns, acceptance criteria, and architectural design across complex, multi-tier and AI-powered application layers — from feature scoping through implementation. Build prototypes to de-risk novel AI approaches and establish the standards others build on. • Optimize Performance & Scale: Manage product availability, latency, scalability, and efficiency by engineering deep reliability into our core software systems and performing advanced system tuning. • Drive Engineering Excellence: Radiate development best practices across the department, perform meticulous code reviews on design and implementation, and build automation frameworks to prevent problem recurrence. • Lead & Grow Engineers: Actively coach and mentor engineers at multiple levels, identify and close skill gaps on the team, and take ownership of accelerating the technical growth of those around you. • Influence Technical Documentation: