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Position Summary
The Principal AI Solutions Engineer is the most senior engineering role in Donaldson's AI Center of Excellence, a focused central team with enterprise-wide reach and a short path from idea to production. Reporting to the Director of Artificial Intelligence, you will build AI solutions and integrations into systems and processes across Donaldson's global manufacturing footprint, take them from prototype to production, and define the engineering standards every AI solution is built to. Qualified candidates must be able to work a hybrid schedule at our Bloomington, MN office.
Role Responsibilities
- Serve as the technical authority in the AI Center of Excellence for how AI solutions are designed and built, evaluating new models, frameworks, and tools and setting the direction the enterprise builds to.
- Partner with business stakeholders and AI leads embedded across functions to identify high-value opportunities, redesigning existing processes with AI as a foundational element rather than a bolt-on.
- Rapidly build and demonstrate working prototypes using large language models, agentic frameworks, and generative AI tools to validate ideas before full investment.
- Lead the end-to-end delivery of AI solutions from prototype through production, ensuring scalability, reliability, observability, and maintainability.
- Design and implement agentic AI systems, including multi-agent orchestration, retrieval-augmented generation pipelines, tool-calling integrations, and context engineering strategies.
- Define the reference architecture and engineering standards that both centrally built and business-built AI solutions are held to, covering prompt engineering, evaluation, monitoring, cost controls, and responsible AI guardrails.
- Take on problems where the constraint is process and data maturity rather than model access, spanning supplier and customer communications, master data quality, and operational planning across a global manufacturing network.
- Integrate AI solutions with enterprise data systems, APIs, and platforms such as cloud data services, collaboration platforms, and ERP and CRM systems to deliver measurable business outcomes.
- Multiply impact through a federated delivery model, coaching business and IT teams who build their own AI solutions so their work meets enterprise standards for governance, security, and quality.
- Mentor and upskill a central team of AI developers and program managers, along with colleagues across the business, fostering an AI-ready culture and working with IT, data, security, and compliance teams to meet enterprise standards.
Travel: Up to 10%
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related field and 6+ years of professional software engineering experience OR a high school diploma and 10+ years of professional software engineering experience.
- 3+ years building and deploying AI/ML or applied AI solutions in production environments.
- Professional experience developing in Python with modern AI and agent frameworks such as Microsoft Agent Framework, LangChain, LangGraph, or equivalent.
- Professional experience building and deploying agentic AI systems, including multi-agent architectures and tool-calling integrations.
Preferred Qualifications
- Hands-on experience building knowledge assistants or retrieval-augmented generation systems over enterprise documents and data, including evaluating and improving retrieval quality.
- Experience with Azure OpenAI Service and Azure AI Foundry for AI solution delivery, and with Snowflake Cortex AI for applying models to governed enterprise data, along with MLOps and AI observability practices and model evaluation frameworks.
- Experience with Microsoft 365 and Power Platform AI capabilities, such as Copilot Studio and Power Automate, including governed environments that allow business teams to build and scale their own agents.
- Experience integrating AI with enterprise manufacturing and supply chain systems, such as Oracle ERP, CRM platforms, and master data management tools.
- Strong facilitation and communication skills, with experience leading process redesign workshops with business teams and translating the outcomes into AI solution requirements.
- Knowledge of responsible AI principles, prompt injection risks, data privacy, and large language model security practices in a governed enterprise environment.
Annual Salary Range: $111,840-$139,800. Actual salaries will vary based on several factors including, but not limited to applicable work experience, training, education, performance.
This position is eligible for annual incentive plan based on performance and company growth.
Immigration Sponsorship Not Available:
- Applicants for this position must be currently and legally authorized to work in the United States without the need for current or future sponsorship (e.g., H-1B, J-1, F-1, CPT, OPT, etc.).
- Donaldson will not offer immigration sponsorship or assume sponsorship of an employment visa for this position.
- International relocation or remote work arrangements outside of the U.S. will not be considered.
#LI-Hybrid
Employment opportunities for positions in the United States may require use of information which is subject to the export control regulations of the United States. Hiring decisions for such positions are required by law to be made in compliance with these regulations. Applicants for employment opportunities in other countries must be able to meet the comparable export control requirements of that country and of the United States.
Donaldson Company has been made aware that there are several recruiting scams that are targeting job seekers. These scams have attempted to solicit money for job applications and/or collect confidential information, Donaldson will never solicit money during the application or recruiting process. Donaldson only accepts online applications through our Careers | Donaldson Company, Inc. website and any communication from a Donaldson recruiter would be sent using a donaldson.com email address. If you have any questions about the legitimacy of an employment opportunity, please reach out to talentacquisition@donaldson.com to verify that the communication is from Donaldson.
Our policy is to provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified persons without regard to race, gender, color, disability, national origin, age, religion, union affiliation, sexual orientation, veteran status, citizenship, gender identity and/or expression, or other status protected by law.
