About this role:

Wells Fargo is seeking a highly motivated Principal Engineer to design, architect, and lead Generative AI and Data Engineering initiatives within the HR Information Technology organization. This role requires a hands‑on technologist who can anchor critical initiatives to drive operational excellence and enhance employee and customer experience.

The Principal Engineer will provide technical leadership across the design, development, and operationalization of Generative AI solutions, while shaping the enterprise HR data strategy. This role will oversee the architecture and delivery of scalable, secure, and resilient data engineering solutions across the HR data ecosystem, enabling advanced analytics, AI‑driven insights, and next‑generation HR capabilities. The Principal Engineer will also act as a trusted advisor to senior leadership, influencing architecture decisions, solution design, and implementation strategies to ensure alignment with business objectives, enterprise standards, and long‑term technology strategy.

In this role, you will:

• Act as an advisor to leadership to develop or influence applications, network, information security, database, operating systems, or web technologies for highly complex business and technical needs across multiple groups
• Lead the strategy and resolution of highly complex and unique challenges requiring in-depth evaluation across multiple areas or the enterprise, delivering solutions that are long-term, large-scale and require vision, creativity, innovation, advanced analytical and inductive thinking
• Translate advanced technology experience, an in-depth knowledge of the organizations tactical and strategic business objectives, the enterprise technological environment, the organization structure, and strategic technological opportunities and requirements into technical engineering solutions
• Provide vision, direction and expertise to leadership on implementing innovative and significant business solutions
• Maintain knowledge of industry best practices and new technologies and recommends innovations that enhance operations or provide a competitive advantage to the organization
• Strategically engage with all levels of professionals and managers across the enterprise and serve as an expert advisor to leadership

Required Qualifications:

• 7+ years of Engineering experience, or equivalent demonstrated through one or a combination of the following: work experience, training, military experience, education

Desired Qualifications:

• 7+ years of progressive engineering experience with sustained hands‑on expertise in architecture, system design, and end‑to‑end solution development.
• 3+ years of hands‑on experience building AI/GenAI solutions, including LLM integration, prompt engineering, RAG patterns, model orchestration, AI pipelines, and responsible AI practices (governance, privacy, security, guardrails)
• Demonstrated technical authority across application, data, and AI domains, influencing architecture decisions and engineering standards at enterprise scale; ability to define reference architectures and guide teams through implementation.
• Proven experience leading the architecture and delivery of Agentic AI platforms, leveraging LLMs, RAG pipelines, vector databases, orchestration frameworks, and agent‑to‑agent communication to enable autonomous/semi‑autonomous HR workflows, integrated with enterprise platforms such as Workday and ServiceNow.
• Experience designing production‑grade AI architectures that support multi‑step reasoning, tool invocation, workflow orchestration, and human‑in‑the‑loop controls, with strong focus on reliability, observability, and performance.
• Proven experience modernizing data platforms, including migration from legacy ecosystems to cloud‑native, lakehouse‑based architectures.
• Hands‑on experience building data platforms on GCP, using services such as BigQuery, Dataflow/Apache Beam, Pub/Sub, Dataproc/Spark, Cloud Storage, Cloud Composer/Airflow, Dataplex, and Data Catalog.
• Hands‑on experience delivering modern applications using microservices architecture, including API design, integration patterns, and secure service-to-service communication.
• Strong background in cloud‑native engineering (containerization, orchestration, CI/CD, DevSecOps) and experience operating systems at enterprise scale.
• Experience defining long‑term technology strategy and roadmaps, aligning architecture decisions and engineering execution to measurable business outcomes (productivity, cycle time reduction, risk/control improvements

Job Expectations:

• Enterprise Technical Stewardship
  • Act as a Principal Engineer and strategic advisor to senior leadership, shaping technology decisions that impact multiple lines of business and the broader enterprise.
  • Define and evolve enterprise‑scale architectures for AI/GenAI solutions and Data modernization ensuring alignment with security, risk, and regulatory requirements.
• Hands‑On Leadership
  • Remain deeply hands‑on—designing, reviewing, and occasionally coding critical components to set a high engineering bar.
  • Lead by example in applying engineering rigor, automation, testing, performance optimization, and secure coding practices.
• AI / GenAI Enablement
  • Drive the strategy, adoption, and governance of AI and GenAI capabilities across HR initiatives.
  • Partner with product, data, risk, and security teams to ensure responsible, explainable, and scalable AI solutions.
  • Identify high‑value use cases and guide teams from proof‑of‑concept to production at scale.
• Influence & Thought Leadership
  • Serve as a visible technical spokesperson internally and externally, presenting ideas, architectures, and innovation narratives with clarity and conviction.
  • Mentor senior engineers and architects, raising the overall technical maturity of the organization.
  • Foster a culture of engineering excellence, curiosity, and continuous learning.
• Outside‑In Innovation
  • Continuously scan the external ecosystem to bring new ideas, technologies, and patterns into the enterprise in a pragmatic, value‑driven manner.
  • Challenge legacy thinking and advocate for simplification, modernization, and platform thinking.
  • Balance innovation with operational stability, risk management, and long‑term sustainability.
• Outcome‑Driven Execution
  • Measure success through business impact, not just technical delivery—improved time‑to‑market, developer productivity, system resilience, and customer outcomes.
  • Partner closely with stakeholders to ensure technology investments deliver durable, enterprise‑wide value.

Posting End Date:

*Job posting may come down early due to volume of applicants.

We Value Equal Opportunity

Wells Fargo is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other legally protected characteristic.

Employees support our focus on building strong customer relationships balanced with a strong risk mitigating and compliance-driven culture which firmly establishes those disciplines as critical to the success of our customers and company. They are accountable for execution of all applicable risk programs (Credit, Market, Financial Crimes, Operational, Regulatory Compliance), which includes effectively following and adhering to applicable Wells Fargo policies and procedures, appropriately fulfilling risk and compliance obligations, timely and effective escalation and remediation of issues, and making sound risk decisions. There is emphasis on proactive monitoring, governance, risk identification and escalation, as well as making sound risk decisions commensurate with the business unit’s risk appetite and all risk and compliance program requirements.

Candidates applying to job openings posted in Canada: Applications for employment are encouraged from all qualified candidates, including women, persons with disabilities, aboriginal peoples and visible minorities. Accommodation for applicants with disabilities is available upon request in connection with the recruitment process.

Applicants with Disabilities

To request a medical accommodation during the application or interview process, visit Disability Inclusion at Wells Fargo.

Drug and Alcohol Policy

Wells Fargo maintains a drug free workplace. Please see our Drug and Alcohol Policy to learn more.

Wells Fargo Recruitment and Hiring Requirements:

a. Third-Party recordings are prohibited unless authorized by Wells Fargo.

b. Wells Fargo requires you to directly represent your own experiences during the recruiting and hiring process.