Principal Enterprise Data Engineer

About FICO

FICO (NYSE: FICO) is a global leader in analytics software, supporting businesses in more than 100 countries to make smarter decisions. We offer a collaborative and inclusive work culture focused on ownership, customer delight, and mutual respect.

Role Overview

Join our engineering team as a Principal Enterprise Data Engineer with expertise in harness engineering—a cutting-edge discipline focused on creating environments that ensure AI coding agents produce trustworthy, maintainable software. You will take full ownership of harness subsystems that guide agents from raw model capabilities to production-quality outputs.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build, deploy, and maintain core harness systems including guides, feedback loops, guardrails, and contextual data to convert model capabilities into dependable engineering output.
• Develop and standardize feedforward guides such as instruction files, reusable component skills, architectural rules, documentation, and codemods to improve first-pass agent accuracy.
• Create feedback mechanisms like custom linters, static analyzers, architecture fitness tests, verification loops, and AI-driven reviewers that catch issues automatically before human review.
• Define quality gating and release standards for AI-generated work, establishing clear escalation processes and authority boundaries to maintain engineering integrity.
• Implement testing infrastructures and methodologies, including consumer and contract testing (e.g., Pact), to evaluate LLM-generated outputs for reliability, safety, and quality.
• Manage continuous improvement cycles by identifying repeated mistakes & applying automated controls, maintaining repository knowledge integrity, and reducing documentation drift.
• Strategize and balance quality control positions throughout the CI/CD pipeline to optimize for speed, cost, and thoroughness in production workflows.
• Develop observability tools and track key performance metrics for agent-assisted development such as cost per merged pull request, time to merge, defect escape rates, and survival rates of agent contributions.
• Collaborate with product and platform teams to translate specifications and acceptance criteria into enforceable and automated engineering controls.
• Act as a technical leader and mentor across engineering teams, advocating best practices for harness engineering and responsible AI tool integration.

Required Qualifications and Skills

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Extensive software engineering experience in large, complex codebases with deep understanding of software architecture, design, testing, and maintainability.
• Practical experience working with AI coding agents such as Claude Code or Codex, including insights into their successes and limitations.
• Proven background building developer tooling including linters, static analysis, containerized CI/CD pipelines, and observability instruments.
• Familiarity with agent instruction conventions (e.g., AGENTS.md) and advanced software development practices like spec-driven development and context engineering.
• Systems-oriented mindset focused on improving environments and embedding quality criteria as automatic, repeatable rules.
• Strong judgment to choose appropriate control mechanisms ranging from deterministic static checks to inferential LLM-based code reviews, considering trade-offs of cost, speed, and reliability.
• Experience defining and owning quality gating and release procedures to uphold engineering standards consistently.
• Understanding of security concerns specific to autonomous AI agents, including prompt injection attacks, permission scoping, sandboxing, and audit logging; and designing appropriate guardrails.
• Knowledge of consumer and contract testing strategies to verify interactions within distributed system integrations.
• Excellent communication skills to effectively collaborate with architects and influence engineering standards across teams.

Our Commitment

• We foster an inclusive environment emphasizing ownership, respect, and customer focus.
• Competitive compensation, benefits, and rewards to recognize your contributions.
• Opportunities for impactful work and continuous professional growth leveraging your unique abilities.
• A balanced, people-centered workplace with employee resource groups and social events to support community and collaboration.

Additional Information

FICO is a pioneering company specializing in Big Data analytics, AI, machine learning, and optimization, servicing major financial institutions and global corporations. We prioritize diversity and equal opportunity employment, encouraging candidates who may not meet every listed qualification but bring valuable strengths to apply. Your privacy is protected according to FICO’s privacy policy.