Roles · AI Product Engineer · Principal

What a Principal } should know

38 core skills, 53 in total. Expectations per skill, and what changes at the next level.

This page lists what a Principal } is expected to know and do, skill by skill. Core skills are the ones a manager and peers assess in a review cycle; the rest count only in self-assessment. Main areas: Programming Fundamentals, Backend Development, Database Management.

38core skills
15additional skills
10skill areas
100%at Advanced or Expert
Assess myself as Principal Full role matrix

Core skills for a Principal

Grouped by area. The label on the right is the expected depth: Awareness, Working, Advanced or Expert.

Programming Fundamentals · 6

Defines organizational algorithmic strategy for AI/ML: enterprise model training optimization standards, cross-team ML algorithm evaluation frameworks, computational resource governance. Makes strategic decisions on ML infrastructure investments based on algorithmic efficiency analysis.

Defines organizational async strategy for AI/ML: enterprise async ML infrastructure standards, cross-team concurrency pattern governance, async architecture maturity model for ML systems. Makes strategic decisions on async infrastructure investments for ML workloads.

Defines organizational code quality strategy for AI/ML development: ML code lifecycle standards, research-to-production quality pipelines, cross-team model code reuse patterns. Makes decisions on ML tooling investments and establishes organization-wide experiment code quality bar.

Defines organizational data structure strategy for AI/ML: enterprise feature store architecture, cross-team model data interoperability standards, ML data governance frameworks. Makes strategic decisions on data platform investments for ML workloads.

Defines organizational strategy for design patterns in AI systems: evaluates pattern approaches for enterprise ML platforms, makes technology decisions on ML architecture patterns, mentors leads on strategic pattern application for scalable AI product architectures.

Defines organizational OOP strategy for AI/ML: enterprise ML pipeline architecture standards, cross-team abstraction layer governance, model serving interface standardization. Makes strategic decisions on ML code architecture balancing research velocity and production quality.

Backend Development · 4

Defines Node.js platform strategy for AI product engineering. Evaluates framework evolution (Bun, Deno, Node.js updates) and shapes enterprise standards for AI-powered backend services. Establishes reference architectures for LLM integration patterns.

Defines company-wide strategy for AI product API platforms, evaluating FastAPI, Django, and emerging async frameworks. Establishes enterprise standards for model serving architectures, API gateway patterns, and cross-product integration contracts for ML-powered services.

Redis Expert

Defines organizational Redis and caching strategy for AI platforms — evaluates Redis vs specialized feature stores, establishes enterprise caching governance for ML workloads, and designs reference architectures for real-time feature serving at organizational scale.

Task Queues Expert

Defines enterprise task queue strategy across AI products: evaluates emerging technologies (Temporal, Inngest), establishes reliability standards for distributed job processing, and designs reference architectures for event-driven AI workflows.

Database Management · 1

PostgreSQL Expert

Defines organizational data strategy for AI/ML platforms: evaluates PostgreSQL vs specialized databases for enterprise ML infrastructure, designs multi-region data architectures for global AI products, establishes governance for ML data storage and vector database technology decisions.

API & Integration · 4

Defines organizational API documentation strategy for AI product platforms spanning model serving, MLOps, and data science tooling. Designs platform-level documentation architecture for unified ML API references and experiment reproducibility specifications. Establishes enterprise API governance standards for AI services across all product teams.

Defines organizational GraphQL API strategy for enterprise AI platforms spanning model serving, MLOps, and data science tooling. Designs platform-level schema architecture for unified access to ML capabilities across business units. Establishes enterprise API governance for AI services balancing standardization with domain-specific model serving requirements.

Defines organizational API strategy for AI/ML: enterprise ML serving API platform standards, cross-team model API governance, API infrastructure investment decisions for ML workloads. Designs enterprise-grade API architecture for AI products.

Defines organizational API strategy. Designs platform API. Establishes enterprise API governance and standards.

Cloud & Infrastructure · 3

AWS Expert

Defines organizational cloud strategy for AI/ML workloads evaluating multi-cloud vs AWS-centric architectures. Designs enterprise-grade ML infrastructure with multi-region SageMaker deployments and cross-account model governance. Establishes FinOps practices for GPU compute optimization and ML training cost management at organizational scale.

Docker Expert

Defines organizational container strategy for AI/ML: enterprise GPU container platform standards, cross-team ML container governance, compute resource allocation frameworks. Designs enterprise-grade container infrastructure for model training and serving at scale.

Defines organizational cloud strategy. Evaluates multi-cloud vs single-cloud. Designs enterprise-grade infrastructure. Establishes FinOps practices.

DevOps & CI/CD · 1

Feature Flags Expert

Shapes organizational strategy for experimentation and controlled rollout of AI capabilities across all products. Designs next-generation feature management platforms integrating ML-driven targeting and automated experiment analysis. Influences industry practices in progressive delivery for AI systems.

Testing & QA · 2

Defines organizational QA strategy. Shapes quality engineering culture. Implements platform testing solutions.

Unit Testing Expert

Defines organizational QA strategy. Shapes quality engineering culture. Implements platform testing solutions.

Machine Learning & AI · 6

Shapes the organization's AI product architecture vision with agent frameworks as a core capability for autonomous product experiences. Drives innovation in agent orchestration patterns including self-improving agent loops, cross-product agent ecosystems, and novel human-AI collaboration paradigms. Influences the agent framework community through contributions to open-source projects and thought leadership on production-grade agent system design.

Defines LLM Applications strategy at the organizational level. Establishes enterprise approaches. Mentors leads and architects.

Defines LLM Evaluation strategy at the organizational level. Establishes enterprise approaches. Mentors leads and architects.

Model Serving Expert

Defines organizational AI serving strategy: inference platform architecture, model deployment governance, and AI infrastructure investment decisions. Evaluates build-vs-buy for serving infrastructure (self-hosted vs managed services). Drives adoption of production ML excellence across the organization.

Defines RAG Architecture strategy at the organizational level. Establishes enterprise approaches. Mentors leads and architects.

Defines Vector Databases strategy at the organizational level. Establishes enterprise approaches. Mentors leads and architects.

AI-Assisted Development · 9

Shapes the organization's vision for AI agent-powered products, defining how autonomous agents transform user experiences and business capabilities. Drives research into novel agent architectures for products — self-improving agents, collaborative human-agent workflows, and personalized agent behavior adaptation. Influences industry standards for responsible AI agent deployment through thought leadership on agent safety, transparency, and user trust in autonomous product features.

Defines AI Code Review strategy at the organizational level. Establishes enterprise approaches. Mentors leads and architects.

Shapes the industry-level vision for AI-driven testing of AI products, pioneering novel approaches to autonomous test generation, self-evolving test suites, and continuous model validation. Drives research into cutting-edge techniques for testing generative AI systems including adversarial robustness, fairness auditing, and hallucination prevention at enterprise scale.

Defines organizational strategy for ChatGPT/Claude adoption across AI product engineering. Establishes enterprise-wide LLM-augmented development frameworks addressing responsible AI usage, intellectual property considerations, and development efficiency at scale. Mentors leads and architects on strategic AI tool integration for product development lifecycle.

Defines Claude Code / Agentic Coding strategy at the organizational level. Establishes enterprise approaches. Mentors leads and architects.

Cursor IDE Expert

Defines Cursor IDE strategy at the organizational level. Establishes enterprise approaches. Mentors leads and architects.

Defines organizational GitHub Copilot strategy for AI/ML: evaluates enterprise approaches for AI-assisted model development, designs governance for AI code generation in ML research and production contexts, establishes standards for responsible AI tool usage across data science organizations.

Defines Model Context Protocol strategy at the organizational level. Establishes enterprise approaches. Mentors leads and architects.

Defines organizational AI strategy including prompt engineering as a core competency. Drives adoption of prompt engineering across engineering, product, and business teams. Establishes enterprise-level AI governance: model selection criteria, cost management frameworks, and responsible AI practices. Influences industry standards through publications and community engagement.

Version Control & Collaboration · 2

Code Review Expert

Defines organizational code review strategy for AI/ML: enterprise ML code review standards, cross-team review governance for research and production code, review culture maturity model for ML teams. Mentors leads on effective ML code review practices.

Git Advanced Expert

Defines organizational Git strategy for AI/ML: evaluates monorepo vs multi-repo approaches for ML platforms, designs enterprise-scale experiment tracking and model versioning through Git, establishes governance for model artifact management across research and production.

Additional skills

Not assessed by the team, but part of the self-assessment and the development plan.

Apache KafkaDatabase IndexingE2E TestingGitHub Actions / GitLab CIKubernetes CoreMultithreadingNetwork FundamentalsOpenTelemetryOWASP & Application SecurityPrometheus & GrafanaSecure Coding PracticesStructured LoggingSystem Design FundamentalsTerraformType Safety & Type Systems
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} in the open competency matrix: 53 skills across 5 levels. The matrix is free for individuals and stays free.