Principal, Applied Science

Role Overview: You are being sought out to fill the position of Principal Applied Scientist at Tekion. As the highest-level AI technical authority on the team, you will be responsible for setting the AI research and engineering direction, owning the agentic system architecture, defining evaluation framework standards, and serving as the primary interface to both the external AI research community and internal platform AI leadership. Your role will require a combination of deep research rigor and a strong focus on production, ensuring that every AI capability you design is shipped, measured, and improved based on evidence. Key Responsibilities: - Own the agentic system architecture, including defining multi-agent coordination patterns, MCP tool taxonomy, intent-to-skill routing logic, policy enforcement design, and memory management strategy across all AI workflows on the platform. - Lead the AI evaluation framework by designing the golden dataset structure, defining evaluation metrics, and owning the CI/CD AI evaluation pipeline for every AI capability release. - Drive the RAG architecture strategy, which involves chunking strategies for MongoDB and Elasticsearch-indexed documents, embedding model selection, retrieval reranking design, and hallucination mitigation patterns. - Own the LLM integration architecture, which includes prompt engineering standards, LLM gateway usage policies, context window management, streaming response patterns, and model version governance. - Lead applied research initiatives to identify novel techniques applicable to automotive retail intelligence use cases and prototype them rigorously in Python. - Define the hexagonal AI adapter contract standard, ensuring the formal interface specification between Python AI services and Java domain cores. - Act as the primary technical interface to platform AI leadership, influencing the platform roadmap based on practical requirements. - Mentor the Applied Scientist and ML Architect, conducting technical reviews of AI system designs, evaluation frameworks, and research approaches. - Publish, present, or contribute to open-source projects where appropriate, representing Tekion's AI engineering excellence externally. Skills & Qualifications: - 10+ years of applied AI/ML experience with at least 3 years at Staff or Principal level, demonstrating a track record of shipping AI systems that measurably changed business outcomes. - Deep expertise across LLM fine-tuning and alignment, RAG system design, agentic frameworks, and MCP tool design. - Proficiency in Python, including PyTorch, Hugging Face Transformers, scikit-learn, and production ML serving tooling. - Strong understanding of distributed AI systems, such as Elasticsearch-backed vector search, Redis/Aerospike serving, Cosmos DB for AI event logging, and Kafka-based feature pipelines. - Proven ability to design formal evaluation frameworks for AI systems aligned with business quality gates. - Experience defining and enforcing hexagonal adapter contracts between AI services and domain service layers in production systems. - Effective communication skills to convey complex AI system designs to non-technical stakeholders, influence product roadmaps, and drive cross-team alignment. Good to Have: - Publications or significant open-source contributions in NLP, information retrieval, or agentic systems. - Experience with Constitutional AI, RLAIF, or preference optimization techniques. - Familiarity with multi-modal AI and its application to automotive retail data. - Prior experience in a product-focused AI role at a SaaS or platform company. Note: The above qualifications are desirable but not mandatory for the role. Perks & Benefits: - Competitive compensation and generous stock options. - Medical insurance coverage. - Opportunity to work with talented individuals from leading Silicon Valley companies. Tekion is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and values diversity in the workplace. Personal characteristics will not be a basis for discrimination in hiring decisions. For privacy practices, please refer to the Applicant Privacy Notice on the Tekion website. Role Overview: You are being sought out to fill the position of Principal Applied Scientist at Tekion. As the highest-level AI technical authority on the team, you will be responsible for setting the AI research and engineering direction, owning the agentic system architecture, defining evaluation framework standards, and serving as the primary interface to both the external AI research community and internal platform AI leadership. Your role will require a combination of deep research rigor and a strong focus on production, ensuring that every AI capability you design is shipped, measured, and improved based on evidence. Key Responsibilities: - Own the agentic system architecture, including defining multi-agent coordination patterns, MCP tool taxonomy, intent-to-skill routing logic, policy enforcement design, and memory managemen