Principal Engineer, AI

Philadelphia, PA, US Senior AI/ML Engineer

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Skills & Technologies

MlflowPineconePrompt EngineeringPythonQdrantRagWeaviate

About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

At Anaplan, we are a team of innovators focused on optimizing business decision\-making through our leading AI\-infused scenario planning and analysis platform so our customers can outpace their competition and the market.

What unites Anaplanners across teams and geographies is our collective commitment to our customers' success and to our Winning Culture.

Our customers rank among the who's who in the Fortune 50\. Coca\-Cola, LinkedIn, Adobe, LVMH and Bayer are just a few of the 2,400\+ global companies who rely on our best\-in\-class platform.

Our Winning Culture is the engine that drives our teams of innovators. We champion diversity of thought and ideas, we behave like leaders regardless of title, we are committed to achieving ambitious goals, and we love celebratingour wins – big and small.

Supported by operating principles of being strategy\-led, values\-based and disciplined in execution, you'll be inspired, connected, developed and rewarded here. Everything that makes you unique is welcome; join us and let's build what's next \- together!

We're seeking a Principal Engineer, AI who can work across the full stack of Anaplan AI applications, from model integration and prompt engineering to building intuitive user interfaces. You'll build production\-ready AI features that empower business users to leverage the power of GenAI within their planning workflows, requiring both deep ML knowledge and strong software engineering skills.

Your Impact

  • Lead the architecture, design, and deployment of scalable Generative AI and Machine learning systems into production environments.
  • Develop end\-to\-end GenAI features, including backend API services, model integration, model monitoring, evaluations, and deployments.
  • Integrate and optimize LLMs for specific business planning use cases, including prompt engineering and RAG implementation.
  • Build conversational interfaces and agentic workflows that make complex planning tasks accessible through natural language
  • Implement evaluation frameworks to measure and improve GenAI feature quality, including accuracy, latency, and user satisfaction metrics
  • Design and develop APIs that expose AI capabilities to Anaplan's platform and third\-party integrations
  • Optimize model inference pipelines for performance, cost, and scalability in production environments
  • Implement monitoring, logging, and observability for GenAI systems to track usage, errors, and model behavior.
  • Collaborate with data scientists to productionise ML models and forecasting algorithms

Your Qualifications

  • Extensive hands\-on professional experience in the field of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or related engineering domains.
  • End\-to\-end exposure in model lifecycle development, including extensive experience in training and deploying ML models in production environments.
  • Deep knowledge of LLM APIs, prompt engineering, and conversational AI patterns.
  • Experience in fine\-tuning LLMs for domain\-specific enterprise applications.
  • Strong expertise in MLOps and LLMOps, ensuring scalable, reliable, and monitorable model deployments.
  • Experience with agentic frameworks and autonomous agent architectures.
  • Proficiency in Python and modern software development practices (testing, code review, CI/CD).
  • Proven track record of delivering complex technical projects on time with high quality

Desirable

  • Advanced degree (Master's or Ph.D.) in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or a strongly related quantitative field
  • Hands\-on experience with cloud\-native ML infrastructure platforms
  • Knowledge of vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant) and embedding models
  • Experience with model serving frameworks (vLLM, TensorRT, Ray)
  • Experience with A/B testing and experimentation frameworks for AI features
  • Contributions to open\-source ML projects or research publications
  • Experience with model observability tools (LangSmith, W\&B, MLflow)

\#LI\-SP1

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB)

We believe attracting and retaining the best talent and fostering an inclusive culture strengthens our business. DEIB improves our workforce, enhances trust with our partners and customers, and drives business success. Build your career in a place where diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging aren't just words on paper – this is what drives our innovation, it's how we connect, and it contributes to what makes us a market leader. We believe in a hiring and working environment where all people are respected and valued, regardless of gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, age, neurodiversity, disability status, citizenship, or any other aspect which makes people unique. We hire you for who you are, and we want you to bring your authentic self to work every day!

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, perform essential job functions, and receive equitable benefits and all privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.

Fraud Recruitment Disclaimer

It has come to our attention that fraudulent and fictitious job opportunities are being circulated on the Internet. Prospective candidates are being contacted by certain individuals, mainly through telephone calls, emails and correspondence, claiming they are representatives of Anaplan. The main purpose of these correspondences and announcements is to obtain privileged information from individuals.

Anaplan does not:

  • Extend offers to candidates without an extensive interview process with a member of our recruitment team and a hiring manager via video or in person.
  • Send job offers via email. All offers are first extended verbally by a member of our internal recruitment team whenever possible and then followed up via written communication.

All emails from Anaplan would come from an @anaplan.com email address. Should you have any doubts about the authenticity of an email, letter or telephone communication purportedly from, for, or on behalf of Anaplan, please send an email to [email protected] before taking any further action in relation to the correspondence.

Role Details

Company Anaplan
Title Principal Engineer, AI
Location Philadelphia, PA, US
Category AI/ML Engineer
Experience Senior
Salary Not disclosed
Remote No

About This Role

AI/ML Engineers build and deploy machine learning models in production. They work across the full ML lifecycle: data pipelines, model training, evaluation, and serving infrastructure. The role has evolved significantly over the past two years. Where ML Engineers once spent most of their time on model architecture, the job now tilts heavily toward inference optimization, cost management, and integrating LLM capabilities into existing systems. Companies want engineers who can ship production systems, and the experimenter-only role is fading fast.

Day-to-day, you're writing training pipelines, debugging data quality issues, setting up evaluation frameworks, and figuring out why your model performs differently in staging than it did on your dev set. The best ML engineers are obsessive about reproducibility and measurement. They instrument everything. They know that a model is only as good as the data feeding it and the infrastructure serving it.

Across the 3,824 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 71% of the market. At Anaplan, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.

Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.

What the Work Looks Like

A typical week might include: debugging a data pipeline that's silently dropping 3% of training examples, running A/B tests on a new model version, writing documentation for a feature flag system that lets you roll back model deployments, and reviewing a junior engineer's PR for a new evaluation metric. Meetings tend to be cross-functional since ML touches product, engineering, and data teams.

Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.

Skills Required

Mlflow (4% of roles) Pinecone (3% of roles) Prompt Engineering (15% of roles) Python (51% of roles) Qdrant (1% of roles) Rag (23% of roles) Weaviate (2% of roles)

Python and PyTorch dominate the requirements. Most roles expect experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or JAX. RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) has become a top-3 skill requirement as companies integrate LLMs into their products. Docker and Kubernetes show up in about a third of postings, reflecting the production focus of the role.

Beyond the core stack, employers increasingly want experience with experiment tracking tools (MLflow, Weights & Biases), feature stores, and vector databases. Fine-tuning experience is valuable but less common than you'd think from reading Twitter. Most production LLM work is RAG and prompt engineering, not fine-tuning. If you have both, you're in a strong position.

Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.

Compensation Benchmarks

AI/ML Engineer roles pay a median of $178,940 based on 11,900 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $227,400.

Across all AI roles, the market median is $200,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $253,000. The 90th percentile reaches $307,500. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Engineering Manager ($293,500) and AI Safety ($274,200). By seniority level: Entry: $97,380; Mid: $160,000; Senior: $227,400; Director: $243,000; VP: $250,000.

Anaplan AI Hiring

Anaplan has 5 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across Data Scientist, Data Engineer, AI/ML Engineer. Based in Philadelphia, PA, US.

Location Context

Across all AI roles, 16% (613 positions) offer remote work, while 3,187 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (2,448 roles, $210,000 median); San Francisco (1,990 roles, $253,000 median); Los Angeles (1,686 roles, $189,000 median).

Career Path

Common paths into AI/ML Engineer roles include Data Scientist, Software Engineer, Research Engineer.

From here, career progression typically leads toward ML Architect, AI Engineering Manager, Principal ML Engineer.

The fastest path into ML engineering is through software engineering with a self-directed ML education. A CS degree helps, but production engineering skills matter more than academic credentials. Build something that works, deploy it, and measure it. That portfolio project is worth more than a Coursera certificate. For career growth, the fork comes around the senior level: go deep on technical complexity (staff/principal track) or move into managing ML teams.

What to Expect in Interviews

Expect system design questions around ML pipelines: how you'd build a training pipeline for a specific use case, handle data drift, or design A/B testing infrastructure for model deployments. Coding rounds typically involve Python, with emphasis on data manipulation (pandas, numpy) and algorithm implementation. Take-home assignments often ask you to build an end-to-end ML pipeline from raw data to deployed model.

When evaluating opportunities: Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.

AI Hiring Overview

The AI job market has 3,824 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 119 entry-level, 1,813 mid-level, 1,472 senior, and 420 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 16% of the market (613 positions). The remaining 3,187 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.

The market median for AI roles is $200,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $253,000. The 90th percentile reaches $307,500. Highest-paying categories: AI Engineering Manager ($293,500 median, 31 roles); AI Safety ($274,200 median, 51 roles); Research Engineer ($260,000 median, 401 roles).

Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.

The AI Job Market Today

The AI job market spans 3,824 open positions across 15 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,702), Data Scientist (281), AI Software Engineer (258). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.

The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (119) are outnumbered by mid-level (1,813) and senior (1,472) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 420 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.

Remote work availability sits at 16% of all AI roles (613 positions), with 3,187 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.

AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $200,000. Top-quartile roles start at $253,000, and the 90th percentile reaches $307,500. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.

Category matters for compensation. AI Engineering Manager roles lead at $293,500 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $142,800. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.

The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (1,968 postings), Aws (1,203 postings), Azure (882 postings), Rag (877 postings), Gcp (735 postings), Prompt Engineering (587 postings), Pytorch (586 postings), Claude (554 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.

Frequently Asked Questions

Based on 11,900 roles with disclosed compensation, the median salary for AI/ML Engineer positions is $178,940. Actual compensation varies by seniority, location, and company stage.
Python and PyTorch dominate the requirements. Most roles expect experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or JAX. RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) has become a top-3 skill requirement as companies integrate LLMs into their products. Docker and Kubernetes show up in about a third of postings, reflecting the production focus of the role.
About 16% of the 3,824 AI roles we track offer remote work. Remote availability varies by company and seniority level, with senior and leadership roles more likely to offer location flexibility.
Anaplan is among the companies actively hiring for AI and ML talent. Check our company profiles for detailed breakdowns of open roles, salary ranges, and hiring trends.
Common next steps from AI/ML Engineer positions include ML Architect, AI Engineering Manager, Principal ML Engineer. Progression depends on whether you lean toward technical depth, people management, or product strategy.

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