Senior Principal Software Engineer - AI tools and Adoption

Yahoo Mail is the ultimate consumer inbox with hundreds of millions of users. It provides a powerful way to access and organize email from any computer, phone, or tablet. With its beautiful design and lightning‑fast speed, Yahoo Mail makes reading, organizing, and sending emails easier than ever.

Yahoo Mail is seeking a Senior Principal/Staff Software Engineer to lead our AI adoption initiative across the Engineering organization. You will be the driving force behind improving our 400+ engineers’ productivity by transforming development practices embedded with AI.

• Lead the transition from AI‑curious to AI‑native engineering practices across all relevant teams.
• Convert skeptics into advocates through data‑driven demonstrations of value and hands‑on enablement including proof of concept.
• Continuously assess emerging AI tools (Copilot, Claude Code, Codex, etc.) and make data‑driven recommendations based on Mail legacy infrastructure.
• Establish KPIs, track progress of adoption, and implement interventions to accelerate uptake.
• Lead and create forums for knowledge sharing, celebrate wins, and foster peer‑to‑peer learning.
• Design technical frameworks for integrating AI tools into existing development workflows and CI/CD pipelines.
• Lead proof‑of‑concepts for coding agents in standardized tasks across various mail teams.
• Partner with security and legal teams to ensure AI tool usage protects IP and meets compliance requirements.
• Establish best practices, guidelines, and guardrails for AI‑assisted development.
• Analyze and optimize the technical performance and cost‑efficiency of AI tool deployments.
• Maintain awareness of cutting‑edge AI developments and identify opportunities for competitive advantage.
• Identify and systematically eliminate technical, cultural, and process obstacles to AI adoption.
• Regularly present adoption metrics, success stories, and ROI to engineering leadership and executives.

• Experience with the latest AI technologies – Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, Claude Code, ChatGPT, OpenAI Codex, Git Hub Copilot.
• 10+ years of software engineering experience with proven expertise across multiple programming languages and paradigms.
• Deep hands‑on experience with AI‑powered development tools (Git Hub Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, etc.).
• Strong understanding of LLMs, prompt engineering, and AI model capabilities/limitations.
• Experience with CI/CD, Dev Ops practices, and modern software development workflows.
• Track record of evaluating and implementing new technologies at scale.
• Proven ability to drive technical initiatives across large engineering organizations.
• Experience leading without authority and influencing senior technical leaders.
• Track record of successful change management in engineering contexts.
• Demonstrated ability to convert technical innovations into business value.
• Experience driving tool adoption across diverse technical teams.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to create compelling narratives for different audiences.
• Patience and empathy when working with skeptics and late adopters.

The material job duties and responsibilities of this role include those listed above as well as adhering to Yahoo policies, exercising sound judgment, working effectively, safely and inclusively with others, exhibiting trustworthiness and meeting expectations, and safeguarding business operations and brand integrity.

At Yahoo, we offer flexible hybrid work options. Most roles do not require regular office attendance, and you may occasionally be asked to attend in‑person events or team sessions. Your recruiter will let you know if a specific job requires regular attendance at a Yahoo office.

Yahoo is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to, and will not be discriminated against based on age, race, gender, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability or any other protected category. Yahoo will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a…