Principal AI Engineer - Aerospace & Defense

IFS is hiring a Principal AI Engineer for its Aerospace & Defense business, which serves airlines, MROs, OEMs and defense operators managing maintenance, asset and service lifecycles at scale. This is a principal-level, forward-deployed role: you set technical direction across product groups and work directly with customers in their own environments. The position is based in the United States.

What you will do

• Help define and deliver a next-generation mobile experience for aviation maintenance, built to work where connectivity is constrained.
• Design and ship AI-powered product capabilities: model integration, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), agentic architectures, evaluation harnesses and MLOps.
• Use AI-assisted development and agentic tooling as core engineering practice, and set the standard the team adopts.
• Embed with Aerospace & Defense customers to deploy, integrate and harden solutions, connecting IFS to ERP, CRM, IoT, telemetry and legacy and mission systems.
• Own delivery end to end: design, development, testing, deployment and operational reliability across cloud, edge and mobile environments.
• Drive technical strategy across product groups, make architecture and shipping-quality calls, mentor engineers, and represent IFS in front of customers and partners.
• Ground technical decisions in direct customer evidence and business value.

What they are looking for

• Hands-on experience using AI-assisted and agentic development tooling in your workflow, and shipping production AI capabilities using ML integration, prompt engineering, RAG, agentic architectures, evaluation and testing, and MLOps.
• A proven track record building and shipping production mobile applications, with the depth to set technical direction for a mobile product. Native iOS experience is strongly preferred.
• Principal-level impact: a recognised technical authority who drives strategy and delivery across multiple teams or product groups.
• Substantial experience deploying, integrating and operating enterprise software in customer environments, including ERP, CRM, IoT and legacy systems, and owning solution architecture in customer context.
• Strong foundations across the delivery lifecycle: design and development, quality and testing, cloud and DevOps, and security, with proficiency in modern general-purpose programming languages.
• End-to-end ownership with a you-build-it, you-run-it mindset, strong communication with technical and non-technical audiences, and a record of growing the engineers around you.

Nice to have

• Experience in or with Aerospace & Defense organisations, or on asset, maintenance, MRO or fleet-readiness management solutions.
• Experience with enterprise asset management (EAM), field service or maintenance-management solutions.
• A degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience of agile delivery and working with globally distributed teams.

Pay and benefits

The salary range is USD 150,000 – 180,000 per year. Benefits include flexible paid time off, including sick and holiday; medical, dental and vision insurance; 401K with company contribution; flexible spending accounts; life insurance and disability benefits; tuition assistance; and community involvement and volunteering events.

Location and work style

The role is based in the United States. IFS says it embraces flexibility and hybrid work opportunities while valuing inclusive workplace experiences and bringing colleagues together to share ideas.

About IFS

IFS is a billion-dollar revenue company with more than 7,000 employees on all continents. It delivers enterprise software through a single cloud-based platform. The company states that all qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran. IFS is a VEVRAA Federal Contractor and an Equal Opportunity Employer.