Principal Software Engineer

Principal Software Engineer

Company Description

At Red Hat, we connect an innovative community of customers, partners, and contributors to deliver an open source stack of trusted, high-performing solutions. We offer cloud, Linux, middleware, virtualization, and AI technologies, together with award-winning global customer support, consulting, and implementation services. Red Hat is a rapidly-growing company supporting more than 90% of Fortune 500 companies.

Job Summary

Come be a part of Red Hat's charge to democratize AI with open source! Red Hat's Global Engineering Team is looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join our newly formed AI Engineering organization. This role will be located within the InstructLab and Granite team, and will be focused on building software tooling to support one or more components of a large language model (LLM) customization pipeline - from document ingestion, to synthetic data generation, to model fine tuning, to model evaluation - as well as the mentorship and building of these skills internal to our Red Hat team. 

In this role, you will serve as a bridge between Red Hat and our peer IBM Research team – this will involve participating in the development of novel techniques and research extensions alongside IBM Research. This role also requires engaging with related upstream open source communities and projects. You will develop working relationships across multiple teams, planning and prioritizing sprint work across a small team, along with direct contribution to development projects at a senior level of ability.

The ideal candidate will be a highly collaborative individual with a passion for working on complex projects in an open organization where contributions are valued and expected from all levels. As this is a fast-moving area of opportunity for Red Hat, the ability to communicate productively and effectively with team members, stakeholders, and Red Hat leadership is critical.

This position reports directly to the Manager of Software Engineering for InstructLab. This position may require occasional travel to partner collaboratively in our Boston, MA office multiple times per quarter. Successful applicants must reside in a state where Red Hat is registered to do business.

Primary Job Responsibilities (what you’ll do)

• Design, implement, and optimize AI tooling and systems to improve the quality and relevance of generated content produced by models created by the end-to-end pipeline.

• Develop retrieval mechanisms to efficiently access and leverage external data sources.

• Train and fine-tune generative models with retrieved data to enhance performance and accuracy.

• Evaluate model performance and iterate on improvements based on metrics and user feedback.

• Work closely with data scientists, product managers, and other stakeholders to understand requirements and deliver effective solutions.

• Participate in code reviews and collaborate on best practices within the engineering team.

• Stay up-to-date with the latest advancements in AI, natural language processing (NLP), RAG methodologies, and other related technologies.

• Participate in upstream generative AI model projects such as lm-eval, ragas.io, LlamaIndex, LangChain, Hugging Face Transformers, vllm, pytorch, etc.

• Document system designs, processes, and model performance for transparency and future reference.

• Report on project status, challenges, and results to stakeholders.

• Serve as a subject matter expert for your assigned component, providing mentorship and expertise to build knowledge and capabilities within Red Hat teams. 

• Gather and analyze user feedback to refine and enhance AI tooling.

Required Skills (what you’ll bring)

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent.

• Advanced programming skills in Python and SQL.

• Experience in or familiarity with machine learning frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch).

• Understanding of natural language processing (NLP) techniques and models.

• Familiarity with retrieval-augmented generation architectures and methodologies.

• Experience with data processing and manipulation libraries.

• Knowledge of microservices and containerization technologies (e.g., Kubernetes) for LLM deployment.

• Strong self-motivation and organizational skills.

• Demonstrated ability to context switch between multiple concurrent projects.

• Outstanding mentorship and coaching skills.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

• Positive attitude and willingness to share ideas openly.

Bonus qualifications

• Masters or PhD in Machine Learning (ML) / Natural Language Processing (NLP).

• Experience with unit testing, integration testing, and performance testing.

• Familiarity with participating in an agile development team.

About Red Hat

Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver high-performing Linux, cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies. Spread across 40+ countries, our associates work flexibly across work environments, from in-office, to office-flex, to fully remote, depending on the requirements of their role. Red Hatters are encouraged to bring their best ideas, no matter their title or tenure. We're a leader in open source because of our open and inclusive environment. We hire creative, passionate people ready to contribute their ideas, help solve complex problems, and make an impact.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Red Hat
Red Hat’s culture is built on the open source principles of transparency, collaboration, and inclusion, where the best ideas can come from anywhere and anyone. When this is realized, it empowers people from diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences to come together to share ideas, challenge the status quo, and drive innovation. Our aspiration is that everyone experiences this culture with equal opportunity and access, and that all voices are not only heard but also celebrated. We hope you will join our celebration, and we welcome and encourage applicants from all the beautiful dimensions of diversity that compose our global village.

Equal Opportunity Policy (EEO)
Red Hat is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and an affirmative action employer. We review applications for employment without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, veteran status, genetic information, physical or mental disability, medical condition, marital status, or any other basis prohibited by law.

Red Hat does not seek or accept unsolicited resumes or CVs from recruitment agencies. We are not responsible for, and will not pay, any fees, commissions, or any other payment related to unsolicited resumes or CVs except as required in a written contract between Red Hat and the recruitment agency or party requesting payment of a fee.

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