Principal Engineer (AI)

Location: Glendale, California, United States. Hybrid schedule requiring work from the office at least four days per week.

Salary: $190,000–$230,000 per year.

Company

hirify.global Animation produces animated films and series and develops creative production technologies for artists, storytellers, and studio teams.

What you will do

• Collaborate with product owners, developers, artists, and creatives on AI-assisted agentic workflow strategy.
• Design and own AI-powered architecture, automation frameworks, integration patterns, and reference implementations across studio pipelines and platforms.
• Define telemetry ingestion, processing, and routing for metrics, logs, and traces, while supporting operational availability, model monitoring, latency, and security.
• Prototype and deploy tools for asset tagging, scene preparation, render queue management, shot setup, versioning, and other high-friction production tasks.
• Integrate AI solutions with digital content creation tools and existing artist-facing toolsets, maintaining reusable components and production-ready automation.
• Drive adoption through documentation, training, artist feedback, productivity metrics, and continuous identification of new automation opportunities.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
• 10+ years of experience building production systems, including 2+ years building AI/ML systems for real workflows.
• Hands-on experience deploying enterprise software in AI, data, or integration environments.
• Expertise with containerization, orchestration, Python, TypeScript, React, and AI frameworks such as LangGraph, Spring AI, and MCP.
• Deep understanding of LLM model integration and tuning.
• Experience designing automation that reduces manual work in complex, multi-stakeholder environments.
• Ability to influence senior engineers without authority and serve as a person others learn from.
• History of building and supporting durable artifacts such as frameworks, templates, training, or open-source projects that extend to other projects.
• Excellent communication skills and ability to translate fluently between artists, production management, and engineers.
• Genuine passion for animation, storytelling, or creative production.

Nice to have

• 2+ years in a Principal, Staff, or Lead role responsible for AI or pipeline automation, ideally in a creative studio.
• Strong understanding of animation production pipelines, departmental workflows, and industry-standard digital content creation software.
• Familiarity with USD, Autodesk Flow Production Tracking, and Jira.
• Experience measuring and reporting the productivity impact of engineering tooling investments.
• Awareness of current AI trends and emerging technologies.

Culture & Benefits

• Collaborative environment spanning technical and creative departments, with emphasis on transparency, trust, communication, and continuous improvement.
• Company-sponsored medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• 401(k), paid leave, tuition reimbursement, discounts, and other benefits.
• External candidates may be required to attend an in-person interview before a hiring decision.