Job at a glance
Here at Appian, our values of Intensity and Excellence define who we are. We set high standards and live up to them, ensuring that everything we do is done with care and quality. We approach every challenge with ambition and commitment, holding ourselves and each other accountable to achieve the best results. When you join Appian, you’ll be part of a passionate team dedicated to accomplishing hard things, together.
Principal ML Platform Engineer Lead the engineering of software that matters — driving AI automation for the world's largest enterprises. This role is based at our headquarters in McLean, Virginia. Appian was built on a culture of in-person collaboration, which we believe is a key driver of our mission to be the best. Employees hired for this position are expected to be in the office 5 days a week to foster that culture and ensure we continue to thrive through shared ideas and teamwork.
We believe being in the office provides more opportunities to come together and celebrate working with the exceptional people across Appian. About the Team Appian Engineering spans the full depth of our platform: from the foundational layers that power enterprise scale, to the AI capabilities redefining what automation can do. We operate in a highly collaborative, fast-paced environment focused on technical precision, continuous learning, and high code quality.
By joining our team, you will solve real-world problems that directly shape how Appian delivers our AI-Powered Process Automation platform to enterprises around the world. The Opportunity As a Principal Software Engineer, you will serve as a technical linchpin for the team, bringing deep expertise in cloud-native architecture and a track record of influencing engineering direction beyond your immediate scope.
Equipped with cutting-edge AI tooling, you will drive the design and delivery of high-complexity engineering solutions, set the technical bar for the team, and lead other engineers towards solutions of real complexity to ensure flawless Enterprise-Grade Orchestration . What You’ll Do Develop Clean Software: Architect, build, and optimize high-performance software systems while maintaining a strong personal technical presence on the team.
Lead Platform Modernization: Spearhead strategic technological changes and champion code refactoring efforts to keep the core Appian codebase cutting-edge, modern, and performant. Engineer with AI: Use AI coding tools fluently as a force multiplier: generating, reviewing, and critically evaluating AI-assisted code to ship faster without compromising quality or correctness. Lead Architecture & Delivery: Drive technical story breakdowns, acceptance criteria, and architectural design across complex, multi-tier application layers — from feature scoping through implementation.
Optimize Performance & Scale: Manage product availability, latency, scalability, and efficiency by engineering deep reliability into our core software systems and performing advanced system tuning. Drive Engineering Excellence: Radiate development best practices across the department, perform meticulous code reviews on design and implementation, and build automation frameworks to prevent problem recurrence.
Lead & Grow Engineers: Actively coach and mentor engineers at multiple levels, identify and close skill gaps on the team, and take ownership of accelerating the technical growth of those around you. Influence Technical Documentation: Share your expert domain knowledge regularly across the department, building a reputation as a vital resource and publishing high-quality content to Engineering’s permanent documentation site.
Required Qualifications Education: Minimum of a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science or a related technical/analytical discipline. (Equivalent experience is not accepted in lieu of a degree). Experience: 10+ years of relevant software development experience with a BS (or 8+ years of experience paired with a Master of