Senior Principal Software Engineer

Join Red Hat as a Senior Principal Software Engineer (ML/AI Tooling) and help democratize AI with open source. This role is located in the Boston, MA office and is part of the newly formed AI Engineering organization.

About the Team

Red Hat’s AI Innovation team leads frontier AI research and productizes outcomes with open‑source software. The team bridges cutting‑edge research and production, translating research papers from conferences such as NeurIPS, ICLR, and ICML into tools that run on the Red Hat AI platform.

About the Role

You will serve as a strategic technical leader, designing frameworks that enable novel AI algorithms in synthetic data generation, model training, and inference‑time scaling. In this high‑impact role you will write code at an expert level, define the technical strategy for the team, and shape Red Hat’s open‑source AI/ML strategy.

What You Will Do

Strategic Architecture & Leadership

• Define the technical strategy and architecture for AI/ML tooling and frameworks to work smoothly with platform components.

• Serve as a Subject Matter Expert, advising leadership on designs that drive community adoption.

• Mentor and coach Principal and Senior engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence.

• Influence the broader open‑source AI ecosystem by designing frameworks that become community staples.

• Champion best practices for leveraging AI‑assisted development tools to accelerate coding, testing, and documentation.

Engineering & Execution

• Lead development of complex projects in data generation, model training, inference‑time scaling, and new algorithms.

• Set engineering standards for code reviews, testing frameworks, and system documentation.

• Evaluate and select appropriate technologies for robust, user‑friendly developer tools.

• Drive the design of open‑source tools to ensure they are accessible, extensible, and community‑ready.

What You Will Bring

• 10+ years of software development experience, with deep expertise building developer tooling for Machine Learning workflows.

• Ability to work in the Boston, MA office.

• Proven track record of maintaining or creating AI/ML projects, preferably popular open‑source or enterprise‑scale.

• Deep knowledge of machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch and Tensor Flow.

• Experience with Large Language Models (LLMs) in tooling, fine‑tuning, or serving contexts.

• Ability to integrate the latest AI tooling frameworks and best practices into organizational workflows.

• Proficiency in a modern backend language (Python, Go, Rust, etc.).

• Demonstrated leadership of technical strategy for tooling frameworks or platform engineering.

• Proven success designing software frameworks or APIs with significant adoption.

• Excellent communication skills to influence Red Hat leadership and shape open‑source strategy.

• Track record of mentoring senior engineers and raising the technical bar.

Considered a Plus

• Advanced Python expertise in the ML ecosystem.

• Experience with state‑of‑the‑art post‑training techniques.

• Advanced degree (Master’s or PhD) in Machine Learning, NLP, or related field.

• Experience with Red Hat products.

Salary Range: $ – $ (Actual offer based on qualifications)

Pay Transparency

Red Hat determines compensation based on location, experience, skills, market value, and internal equity. Annual salary is one component of the package. The position may also be eligible for bonus, commission, or equity. For Remote‑US locations, the actual salary range may differ.

About Red Hat

Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterprise open‑source software solutions, offering Linux, cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies. We employ over 40,000 associates worldwide, working flexibly across in‑office, office‑flex, and remote environments.

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage

• Flexible Spending Account – healthcare and dependent care

• Health Savings Account – high deductible medical plan

• Retirement 401(k) with employer match

• Paid time off and holidays

• Paid parental leave plans for all new parents

• Leave benefits including disability, paid family medical leave, and paid military leave

• Additional benefits: employee stock…